Atohi
With this Children's Movie, I hope to raise awareness of the critically endangered Red Wolves.
They are one of only two wolf species in North America, and tragically, there are only about 10 left in the wild.
Their loss of habitat due to Land development and climate change, along with illegal hunting and vehicle collisions, has driven them to be one of the most endangered carnivores in the world.
Synopsis
In Southern Pennsylvania, deep in the Appalachian woods, Atohi and his three rambunctious sisters were born to his loving mother and father. They ran and played all their days, hunting frogs, splashing in the rivers, rolling in mud.
But one day, bulldozers and other human machines crash through the forest for highway development. In the chaos, he gets separated from his family. A gunshot rings in the distance. Assuming his family is dead, Atohi runs deeper into the forest as winter dawns. He struggles to find food and shelter. Things look bleak.
A 'murder' of crows circling overhead spots him. One of the female crows, Selu, is overcome with empathy and convinces the rest of the murder to adopt Atohi. They help him find shelter, hide from hunters, and find food. The adults and adolescents play with him in the snow and share meals.
Over the winter, he grows into a young wolf. Atohi begins to struggle with loneliness without other wolves despite his love for his new crow family. Selu tells him about the red wolf family that the murder had integrated into years ago and how she lost them to humans too -- that grief was one of the driving forces to take him in.
Atohi decides he needs to leave in search of his family or any other Red Wolves. Takatoka, Selu's partner and Atohi's Adoptive father, begrudgingly agrees to go on this quest with him, south. Throughout this journey, they struggle to find food, dodge hunters/coyotes/bobcats, cross highways and navigate human industry, and cope with the disappointment of being pointed in the wrong direction by other woodland creatures.