Considering the trials they went through, it's a wonder that Montana's bounteous game herds survived at all, let alone prospered and multiplied.
That's the take-home message delivered in a new movie, "Back From the Brink."
Funded by the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, Montana Public Television and others, the two-hour DVD closely examines the tumultuous history of wildlife trying to deal with the onslaught of European people, technology and economies.
It relies heavily on archival footage -- often shot with hand-held eight-millimeter cameras -- and interviews with conservation pioneers in the state.
The project got started 10 years ago, said Terry Lonner, the director and a former supervisory biologist with FWP. He now runs Media Works Studio in Bozeman.
Jim Williams, a biologist in Kalispell, found a box of old photos in a dumpster, Lonner said, and realized that history was being tossed.
People started talking and, in 2000, Lonner set himself seriously to his labors, researching, gathering old photos and movies, and interviewing old timers, six of whom have died since he began filming.
"There wasn't a lot of to-do about it," Lonner said. "We just wanted to get it done and tell what happened."
When Lewis and Clark came through Montana 200 years ago, they marveled almost daily at the abundance of game. But the economics of distant places soon changed all of that.
By 1850, when the fur trade ended, the influx of trappers and hunters already had made a dent in game populations. Forty years later, hide hunters, spurred by industrial age demands for leather products, had all but eliminated the bison.
Then came the discovery of gold and the influx of hungry miners. Ducks fetched $2.50 a dozen. Deer were worth a dollar.
Dredges uprooted delicate riparian areas and vast forests were swathed to stoke smelters and trains. Cattle brought anthrax, foot and mouth disease, brucellosis and more. Sheep brought other diseases.
Then came homesteaders and plows, followed by drought and grasshoppers and the dustbowl years. By 1935, 25 percent of the state was on welfare but ammunition was cheap, and anything that moved became a potential meal.
Late in the 19th century, sportsmen and others realized that they needed to take big steps if wildlife was to survive, but knowledge was scant and money was even rarer.
It wasn't until the 1930s -- a time when hunters got excited if they saw even the track of a deer -- that professionals began managing wildlife in scientific ways.
Elk, bighorn sheep, antelope and birds were fostered and transplanted, eventually resulting in the huge herds and flocks found today.
It took a lot of hard work, sportsmen dollars and a lot of bumps and bruises to get the job done. Imagine putting mountain goats in crates and hauling them away on a pack horse or, better yet, a rubber raft.
But the decades of labor paid off.
Jim Posewitz, a retired FWP biologist and now an author and historian, summed it up in the film.
"Maybe the most significant thing we have done as a society," Posewitz said. "Is to be judged not by what we have invented or conquered, but by what we have nurtured and preserved."
"Back from the Brink," will show at the Willson Auditorium at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 28. Admission is free.
For more information, go to backfromthebrinkmt.org
Scott McMillion is at scottm@dailychronicle.com
