Smith: Wings Over Water spreads conservation from big screen to classroom

It was spring in a prairie wetland and life was bursting at the seams.

Ducks were courting, cranes were nesting and songbirds were calling.

The scenes were part of "Wings Over Water," a film showing at the Daniel M. Soref Planetarium & Dome Theater at the Milwaukee Public Museum.

With about 75 others, I attended a showing of the movie Tuesday evening. The event was sponsored by Ducks Unlimited.

And thanks to IMAX technology I felt immersed in the images on the giant screen.

When redhead drakes splashed and jousted in competition for a hen, I was amazed I didn't get drenched.

During a close-up of a sandhill crane colt cracking its egg, I expected a shard to fall on my foot.

When a yellow warbler was shown migrating over the Gulf of Mexico, it was as if I were flapping alongside.

The film highlights the ecological importance of the prairie pothole region, a 300,000-square-mile area of the northern great plains in the U.S. and Canada. The PPR includes parts of Minnesota, Iowa, North and South Dakota and Montana as well as Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

It is widely considered one of the richest wildlife production zones on the planet. It also helps filter water and store carbon. But due to its rich soil, it also has had millions of acres converted to farming and other agricultural uses. The film highlights the value of and threats to the PPR.

The movie's co-stars are the sandhill crane, mallard and yellow warbler.

Wings Over Water follows the species through their annual movements with a focus on nesting and rearing in the PPR.

The film's major supporters include Ducks Unlimited, Audubon, ULINE and Max McGraw Conservation Foundation.

Its executive producers are Chris Dorsey, a Wisconsin native who now is president and CEO of Dorsey Pictures in Castle Rock, Colorado, and Charlie Potter, executive director of Max McGraw Conservation Foundation in Dundee, Illinois.

The idea for Wings Over Water traces to a meeting Dorsey and Potter convened about five years ago at McGraw to talk about the future of conservation. Potter said they invited several philanthropists and long-time donors to conservation causes, including Doug Oberhelman, former chairman of Caterpillar.

Potter said the consensus at the meeting was the need for change.

"We all knew what had been tried in the traditional conservation community wasn't working," Potter said. "We were losing because we were just talking to ourselves."

He and Dorsey decided on a new means to reach outside the normal circle of conservation organizations: an IMAX movie.

Wings Over Water was filmed during the COVID-19 pandemic, released in 2022 and since has been shown at giant screen venues around North America, Potter said. The 45-minute movie is narrated by Michael Keaton and includes music by Huey Lewis.

Its scenes are incredible and place you in the wetlands and grasslands of the PPR.

One will have you reaching out in self-defense as a great-horned owl zooms in toward a hen mallard on its nest. Another will have you attempting to block a falling duck poop.

The high-definition "in your face" viewing experience is intended to evoke strong reactions.

But the film is just the tip of the spear in this effort. The Flippen Group, a company that develops business solutions and educational materials, has taken clips from the film and created lessons for K through 12 students.

Potter said Wings Over Water will become part of lessons in science and other classes at thousands of schools this year. He and Dorsey hope to reach 70 million students.

"This is the type of transformational change we need to achieve real conservation success," Potter said.

So it's an amazing film. But Wings Over Water can also help increase environmental literacy in the country.

As stated by the National Science Foundation: "In the coming decades, the public will be more frequently called upon to understand complex environmental issues, assess risk, evaluate proposed environmental plans and understand how their decisions affect the environment."

At Tuesday's screening, Bob Spoerl of Waupaca, Ducks Unlimited first vice president, said most children in America know of the Everglades and rain forests and the perils and plights each face.

"But they really don't understand one of the biggest tracts of land we have in this country and that's the prairie pothole region," Spoerl said. "Ducks Unlimited has known this since its inception. That's where we've been putting our dollars. Over the years we've learned not only how much this region benefits waterfowl but how much it benefits water and 900 other species."

Hopefully students will get to know a whole lot more about the PPR thanks to Wings Over Water and its educational derivatives and help protect this valuable region for future generations.

Wings Over Water is showing at 12:45 daily through Aug. 31 at the Milwaukee Public Museum.

Smith: Continued decline in breeding duck numbers raises questions about habitat

Smith: There are more than 15,000 lakes in Wisconsin. What are the state's deepest lakes?

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wings Over Water spreads conservation from big screen to classroom