Titled Changing Nature, this was the show's attempt to have an environmental message, as was par for the course in the early 1990s. At first, the plot is nothing new; The Sinclair family is awaiting the arrival of the Bunch Beetles, which come every year to breed and eat the cider poppy plants. Unfortunately, the WESAYSO company, where Earl Sinclair (the father) works, has destroyed the swamp where the Bunch Beetles breed, and only one Bunch Beetle appears. With no baby Bunch Beetles to eat them, the cider poppy plants grow out of control--and then the episode veers into uncharted territory.
The CEO of WESAYSO, B. P. Richfield, decides to deal with the cider poppy infestation by poisoning them. Unfortunately, this results in the death of all plants. Desperate to make amends, he suggests generating rain to grow new plants by producing clouds from volcanoes. Unfortunately, this only succeeds in causing a "nuclear winter" and freezing the dinosaurs to death. The episode ends on that note.
Although characteristically surreal, Changing Nature actually captures many of the finer points of environmentalism and ecology. As the Bunch Beetles and the cider poppies show, the absence of one species can have unexpected effects on the population of another, and attempts to control those effects often don't work. While the simple environmental message is most obvious, there is another, more hidden, one: misguided efforts at conservation can do more harm than good.
Despite starring a cast of dinosaur puppets, Jim Henson's Dinosaurs managed to have one of the most well-thought out environmental messages of any TV show of its time.
