bison in 4K - live on Wild Commons
On the outskirts of Denver, a herd of bison grazes on land that was once a chemical weapons facility. This film just watches.
Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge sits northeast of Denver on land that has been remade several times over. Apache, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, and Ute peoples once followed bison herds across these plains. Then came farmland, then a U.S. Army chemical weapons manufacturing facility producing mustard agent and nerve agents, then decades of pesticide production, then a Superfund designation in 1987. After an enormous environmental cleanup addressing thousands of acres of contaminated soil and fifteen groundwater plumes, the land was gradually transferred to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In 2007, sixteen bison arrived from Montana.
Bison in 4K, filmed by Jackson Perkins and produced by Wild Commons, does not narrate any of that history. There is no voiceover, no argument to follow, no conclusion to reach. The camera simply stays with the herd for four hours as bison graze, rest, tend calves, and move slowly through shortgrass prairie with Denver visible just beyond the refuge boundary. Knowing what this land has been through changes the experience of watching them. These animals are not symbols of untouched wilderness. They are participants in one of the most unlikely restoration stories in American conservation, grazing a prairie that absorbed some of the defining forces of the twentieth century and is, slowly and imperfectly, becoming wild again.
Why This Film Matters
Bison are often reduced to icons of the American West, but watching a herd for any length of time reveals something richer: social animals with lives unfolding entirely beyond our own. Bison in 4K makes the case that nature documentary does not always need to explain or persuade. Sometimes the most powerful thing it can do is create space to observe. On a landscape as historically layered as Rocky Mountain Arsenal, that observation carries its own quiet argument for what repair can look like, and why it matters.
Film Credits
Cinematographer: Jackson Perkins
Producer: Wild Commons
Featuring: American Bison (Bison bison)
Location: Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, Denver, Colorado
Runtime: 4 hours
Release Year: 2026
What is Wild Commons?
Wild Commons was co-founded by the Wild Lens Collective and Impact Media Lab to provide a new way to distribute independent wildlife and environmental films. So many films have successful festival runs and then never get seen again due to the very broken distribution system - we’re here to change that!
The Wild Commons YouTube channel hosts amazing, free to watch independent films and supports the creators by using YouTube’s monetization tools. By watching the films and subscribing to our channel, you can support the filmmakers as well as helping them create even more films.