The following study explores two separate yet intimately related aspects of the nature documentary, as film and as television production. It first provides a context in which to understand and appreciate the vast amount and variety of material that has been produced in this unique segment of the mass media, a segment still underrepresented in mass communications studies. The context is established by performing an original historical survey of the nature documentary genre, a genre which the survey dates to some of the very first images recorded as motion picture film. The survey then follows the course of the genre to the present time. In turn, the survey provides a chronological and contextual framework for exploring mythologies that have informed the nature documentary since its inception. The study advances the thesis that, as with fictional media, the nature documentary has been the instrument of mythopoeic force. It endeavors to identify, type, and analytically deconstruct a number of the operating mythologies, as well as to trace their evolution and/or stasis over the course of the genre's history. The ultimate goal of this study is to initiate scholarly dialogue and additional historical and critical research about this largely overlooked and under-appreciated form of mass media. Indeed, the nature documentary has had a long history of communicating to an ever less rural population perceptions of an increasingly distant natural world. The study offers a point of departure for productive further investigation of subject matter that in itself serves as a distinct lens through which to view the development of mass media and its relationship to modern western culture.