On Sunday October 15 Idaho Watersheds Project initiated the first screening of a 30 second television public service announcement on cable television broadcasts of National Geographic Explorer in six Idaho cities and in Seattle. The ad will continue to run on the same program on four consecutive Sundays. IWP will also be acquiring television time for this public service announcement in New York City on Sunday evening, October 29, 2000 which is the day the New York Times Magazine will have an article about wolf reintroduction in Idaho.
The excellent 30 second spot was produced by John Plummer Broadcast Video of Ketchum, Idaho.
The video starts with much helicopter engine noise and the image of a helicopter taking off. A voice-over starts speaking and states: "In April of this year, five wild wolves were gunned down by federal agents in central Idaho to preserve welfare ranching". Additional images follow of shells being loaded into a shotgun by gloved hands and the gun being snapped shut. Then two shots ring and a booted man walks away with the gun followed by images from the air of the Idaho mountains and of a running wolf and the sounds of a wolf howling. Images of cattle grazing on creek banks follow with the voice-over continuing: "Learn the truth about ranching on your public lands" followed by the IWP logo and URL which fades out leaving an image of a wolf patting at stream water with its paw.
IWP would have enjoyed having James Earl Jones or Robert Redford as the voice-over, but all-in-all the video turned out very successfully. IWP is hopeful that we can put the video up on our web site as streaming video for web surfers to see. IWP has put up several pages on our web site as well as links to other sites underlining the fact that public lands ranching is the reason for the killing of wolves (an endangered species in the US) and other native predators.