Produced over three years by a team of biologists and filmmakers from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, The Sagebrush Sea is a one-hour documentary that looks at life in the sage through the eyes of the Greater Sage-Grouse, and explores our impact on the landscape. As the seasons change, we encounter the surprising diversity of life that relies on the sage — songbirds, mule deer, pronghorn, and the powerful Golden Eagle.

But in the shadow of energy development, these lucrative basins are contested territory. Here, sage-grouse are sensitive barometers for environmental change, and their populations have declined by at least 90% since European settlement. The sagebrush landscape is changing, and some timeless elements of its sense of place — the cascading songs of sage thrashers, the otherworldly booming of strutting grouse, the widely-spaced tracks of a Pronghorn’s sprint — are at risk of fading away.