COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio’s Department of Natural Resources has released a $2.5 million IMAX documentary, “Ohio: Wild at Heart,” that is drawing large crowds at science museums statewide as it chronicles the state’s transformation from a 1969 industrial catastrophe into a nationally recognized model for conservation and outdoor recreation.
The film arrives against a backdrop of more than five decades of environmental recovery in a state whose most notorious episode — the Cuyahoga River catching fire in 1969 — helped launch the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It is scheduled to enter classrooms next year.
Ohio Department of Natural Resources Director Mary Mertz described the documentary as “a love letter to the mission of protecting our natural resources and expanding opportunities to explore.”
Filmed over more than a year and paid for with information and education funds, the project features Ohio’s top-ranked state park system to highlight wildlife conservation efforts and the restorative power of outdoor recreation.
Narrated by Ohio State football great Archie Griffin, the film sweeps across the state’s landscapes — from the lighthouse-dotted shores of Lake Erie in the north to the towering limestone formations of the Hocking Hills in the south.
Environmental recovery
The historical weight behind the film is considerable. It was the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland catching fire in 1969 that sparked the modern environmental movement and the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Just ahead of the river’s 50th-anniversary milestone, the Cuyahoga’s fish were declared once again safe to eat.
Among the conservation stories featured is a former Blackhawk pilot’s effort to successfully relocate rare trumpeter swans to Ohio marshlands, alongside a wildlife biologists’ program to repopulate once-endangered bald eagles. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, and his wife Fran appear in the film showcasing family-friendly nature paths lined with pages from children’s books — known as “storybook trails.”
Mental health and recreation
The documentary also emphasizes nature’s mental health benefits. Participants credit activities as varied as hiking, kayaking, birding, ice fishing and dog-sledding with restoring their bodies, improving mental health and combating loneliness.
“People feel like you have to go far away to experience nature,” a naturalist says on screen. A volunteer adds: “We restore nature, nature restores us.”
Audience response
Ricky Jackson, a conservationist and taxidermist from Gallipolis, Ohio, in the state’s Appalachian region, said he was not expecting the scope of the film after viewing it at its premiere at COSI, Columbus’ science center, last fall.
“It was just really, really unexpected to see so much diversity all filmed in Ohio,” Jackson said.
Jackson described the film as “very cool, very well done” and said he left the theater motivated.
“It made you want to see parts of the state you’ve never seen, or experience nature in Ohio in a way that you just didn’t know was available,” he said.