in the footsteps of large predators
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ARTE – THURSDAY 1RE SEPTEMBER AT 7 PM – DOCUMENTARY
This is another American myth. Yellowstone, the world’s first natural park, created in 1872, when the United States was a pioneer in environmental protection. In this vast space of 9,000 km2which extends over Wyoming, Montana and bites into Idaho, a rich and multiple fauna lives according to the only law of nature, that of the strongest.
It is at this price that biodiversity is maintained. After two years of filming, Thomas Winston brings the demonstration in images of a powerful beauty. It begins with a first part in the form of a mea culpa, which looks back on the human interventions that have shaken the balance of thousands of years, and highlights the essential activity of predators.
Orchestral music, dramatic intensity, image quality: the documentary appropriates the codes of Hollywood film, like an animal western. It is true that the decor lends itself to it, between the Rockies and powdered ice. In this “diamond dust”, All shots are allowed. Hungry lynx that we will find regularly, leaping on the banks of the Madison River, or in ambush behind a duck. Another hopping animal, the red fox, rises in the air before falling in a picket in the snow, head first, on its vole prey.
The change of tone is perceptible before approaching the interventions of the man. “Two million winters have shaped a species that strives to survive here: the bison”, said the voiceover. The conquest of the West decimated the bison. Only a dozen individuals found refuge in Yellowstone in 1872 – today there are several thousand.
Protected wolf and grizzly
Then came the turn of the wolf, according to the logic of the time: “A century ago, predators were seen as the enemies of progress. [Ainsi] in 1926, rangers shot the last wolf in Yellowstone. Scientists did not know then that an ecosystem needed these predators. » It was not until 1995 that the first wolves were reintroduced. This allows the viewer to follow several packs and Queue Noire, a young lone wolf whom the director has befriended.
The timing is respected. After winter, which occupies half of the documentary as well as half of the year, spring allows us to meet a third large predator, the grizzly bear, which has come out of hibernation. To represent him, Maman Bear, a 20-year-old matriarch, who owes her fame to her extremely rare litter of four cubs, in 2010. Before her, “bears were less than 150 in Yellowstone”. Since then, they have been protected. Today, they are 700 in the park. “Mother Bear, in one lifetime, has allowed the return of an ancestral balance. » The lesson seems understood.
Yellowstone, extreme nature (1/2), by Thomas Winston (US, 2019, 2 × 86 min). The second installment will air on Saturday, December 28 at 8:50 p.m. Available on arte.tv
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