This American Land

- Coming up on "This American Land"... - A lot of curiosity comes with telling people that I do beaver conflict work and that I went through BeaverCorps.

- Beavers play a crucial role creating healthy and diverse environments.

Now you can help protect their handiwork.

- We've had 100% survivorship, meaning those cubs, upon release, figured it out.

- A conservation success story and some surprises for North Carolina's black bears.

- Whenever you do something new and a little bit different, you're gonna get some suspicion and people wondering and so forth.

And that's just human nature.

- Whether in news, sports, or conservation, Ted Turner left a big mark.

We'll round up some of his lasting contributions.

Saddle up.

"This American Land" starts now.

[dynamic music] ♪ ♪ - Hello, and welcome to "This American Land."

I'm your host, Ed Arnett, and we have stories today about innovation, patience, and trusting science to make the right choices for our landscapes, waters, and wildlife.

Conservation is always evolving, and strategies change when scientists realize they've made mistakes.

Beavers used to be seen as pests.

Now they're habitat heroes, and scientists have learned a new appreciation of the vital role they play cleaning and conserving water and in fire protection.

And there's a growing community of fans joining the BeaverCorps.

We're gonna start in Montana with correspondent Brad Hicks.

[gentle music] - When Elissa Chott finds that proverbial fork... - I don't know if this is the right way.

- She definitely chooses the road less traveled.

- I think when we get higher, it won't be as bad.

- She's bouncing along south of Butte, Montana... - Headed up to a place called Moose Creek Drainage.

- Close to the continental divide.

- We're gonna go meet everybody up here at the top of the hill.

- Everyone is eager... - And there's a "You made it" sign.

- Because she belongs to the BeaverCorps.

- So we're all here today because of beavers.

And why beavers?

That's the big question, right?

- BeaverCorps is the brainchild of Mike Callahan.

- Traditionally, the beavers would be trapped or killed when they cause a problem.

And most people don't wanna do that.

But if they don't know better, they don't know there's options.

And so my wife got involved with me, and we started putting pipes through beaver dams and things like that to resolve conflict.

- It worked so well, he started the Beaver Institute.

That was a decade ago.

- I never could have planned it.

[chuckles] I had a 20-year career as a physician assistant.

- Now it's national.

They do it all--beaver management, beaver education, beaver science, a beaver convention, and their flagship program, the BeaverCorps.

- We're training beaver coexistence practitioners to be out in the field across all of North America.

And ideally, for us, we'd like to have a practitioner within two hours of any landowner who has a beaver/human conflict.

- Resolving those conflicts, instead of just killing the beaver, is important because we're beginning to understand just how essential beavers are to the environment.

Their dams and ponds slow the flow, allowing sediment to fall out, creating cleaner water downstream.

The surrounding wetlands provide resilience for the water table and a reliable source of cool water, soaking up excess during floods and storing it during droughts.

And when wildfires happen, those spaces serve as fire breaks for us and safe haven for other animals.

This entire ecosystem they build is home to countless other critters.

- They throw a really incredible party, and all these other species show up.

- [gasps] This is incredible!

- These beaver benefits are so widely recognized, they're even highlighted in the recent Pixar film "Hoppers."

- You wanna live here, you better learn pond rules.

- What are pond rules?

[all gasp] - Oh, oh, I am clearing the rest of the day.

Let's hear it for Mabel, everyone.

[all hooting] - Some folks say that people can punch above their weight.

I think beavers munch above their weight.

- For three decades, Brock Dolman has been trying to get people to embrace the benefits of beavers.

- Boy, when they work together, you've just got a plethora of life, and anybody who keeps water on the land longer-- friend of mine.

- But not everybody embraces the beaver love.

- California has beaver.

We're so lucky.

And yet they start messing around in streams and creeks and cutting down neighbors' trees, and humans can get really frustrated.

- This is an area where we've had a super active beaver dam, probably been established here for about five or so years.

Over on this side of the road, we actually have the beaver lodge.

They definitely are super happy here.

- But the homeowners association here is not.

The creek runs through a residential neighborhood east of Sacramento, and the HOA is responsible for it.

- There's some concern over the flooding issues, and the beavers have become more active and slowly create bigger and bigger dams.

And the edge of the ponding is actually quite close to the homes in the development.

- But instead of getting rid of the beavers, the HOA has called in the BeaverCorps.

- Strap up, and let's go.

[lighthearted music] - This is our decontamination station.

- Believer with the beaver fever.

- [laughs] Yeah.

- We're gonna have people stopping in all day long wondering what we're doing, why we're doing it.

- Don't be messing with my beavers.

- This is so great to have you all out here.

- The project is part of a new statewide program to promote getting along with beavers.

And these are all BeaverCorps students... - I'm feeling excited.

- Learning how it's done.

- I'm excited to just be a sponge.

- This will be my first time getting my hands dirty.

- California's Department of Fish and Wildlife supplies the funds.

The Occidental Arts and Ecology Center in Sonoma County manages the program.

- To actually have successful beaver coexistence, we need professionals that know how to do it right.

So the Beaver Institute trains BeaverCorps people to do beaver coexistence based on their deep experience.

So we're training 30 people.

- The BeaverCorps program starts online-- about 50 hours of coursework covering beaver behavior, ecology, even building a beaver business if you want.

- It doesn't come across like reading a textbook.

It feels very conversational.

- And bend.

- Then each student does four mentored projects in the field before they're certified.

- There we go.

We have retired school teachers.

We have biologists.

We have artsy people.

Anyone's welcome to join BeaverCorps.

- I'll be 68 in August, and, like, yeah, you can do it.

[creaking] - All right, here we go.

- For many in this group, today is their first big test in the field--a pond-leveling device to keep the beaver from backing up the creek and possibly flooding people's yards.

The pipe caps how high the pond can go.

- The beavers have their habitat.

So they can stay, but people's properties are protected.

- The cage creates a buffer so the beavers won't feel the flowing water and clog the pipe.

[water rushing] [gentle music] ♪ ♪ Beavers are super sensitive to flowing water.

When they feel flowing water, they wanna stop it, dam it up.

- We're here just a few hours after the installation, and there are two beavers who are already trying to fix the changes that were made to the dam.

You see this one right here bringing sticks up and laying them on the dam.

- Back under the big sky of Montana... - It's very permeable.

It's leaky.

Water flows through.

And so that's... - We're about to see why Elissa Chott has driven to the Moose Creek Drainage.

- A lot of curiosity comes with telling people that I do beaver conflict work and that I went through BeaverCorps.

- She graduated from the program more than five years ago... - I call myself a BeaverCorps member.

- And is here to solve a problem.

- This will be one of the release sites when the transplant beavers arrive.

- Montana recently approved a plan to relocate beaver from places where they're not wanted to areas where they'll thrive and build their beaver ecosystems.

Moose Creek at the Continental Divide is one of the pilot locations.

But when the beavers find the water flowing through this culvert, you know what's gonna happen.

- When they hear that trickle of water, they feel it, they wanna dam it.

And then bend up.

Lovely.

- So she's showing volunteers how to build a device she learned in the BeaverCorps... - A little C-clamp.

- A specially designed exclusion fence.

- We like to call that beaver bling.

You have to build the fences big enough to keep them away from that sound and feel of water.

It's so rewarding.

Learning how to do it properly is a must.

And so BeaverCorps really is good at building those skill sets.

- I still get excited with every device that goes in.

And one of the things that I find really enjoyable about this work is finding common ground.

Because no matter what a person's issues are with beavers, usually we can work something out.

And I think it serves as a model for society in general that, instead of being divisive, look for common ground and build on that.

[soft guitar music] - Now to a success story for another charismatic mammal.

Back in the 1970s, the outlook for black bears in North Carolina was pretty bleak due to agricultural changes and loss of habitat.

But the creation of bear management areas has led to thriving populations in both rural and surprisingly urban areas like Asheville.

Katie Perkins from the Wildlife Society has our story.

- These cubs are very resilient.

When they get released back into the world, it is a time of year when there is acorns on the ground.

There's soft mass.

There's other natural foods.

And they know what to find.

They know how to find those foods.

They have the natural instinct to survive.

They're just really good at adapting.

- Colleen Olfenbuttel has studied these mesmerizing mammals for 25 years.

Clear cutting, agriculture changes, and loss of habitat reduced black bear numbers to less than 1,000 in the 1970s.

- We set aside what was considered good bear habitat.

We call them designated bear management areas.

And that proved to be a very successful strategy to where now we have over 20,000 bears in North Carolina, and we considered them fully restored to the state.

Black bear cubs get orphaned for a whole host of reasons, from their den being disturbed to maybe the mother gets hit and killed by a vehicle.

Our agency steps in, and when we get a report of a suspect orphaned bear cub, we go out and we try to confirm it and capture it.

And if we're successful in capturing that cub, we bring it to one of our two licensed rehabilitators that specialize with rehabilitating bear cubs.

So we have just immobilized one of our rehabilitated bear cubs with a drug called BAM.

And it usually takes five to ten minutes for the drug to take effect.

Then we can take the bear out and start processing it for release.

[soft music] We are attaching a GPS collar to this cub.

The collar may look fairly large, but it actually is only 3% of this cub's weight.

And that's what we aim for, is if we're gonna put a collar on an animal, especially a bear, we want that collar to weigh no more than 5% of the bear's weight.

This collar is designed with a dropoff mechanism.

So April 1st, it will come off the cub.

The reason we put on the GPS tracking collar is so basically, when we release this cub back into the wild, we can find out where it goes.

How far does it move?

What is its fate?

We actually have bears living in a very urban environment, and we have a lot of questions about their life history and what they do and how they navigate.

- A study in Asheville revealed urban bears are heavier, females produce at a younger age, and they have larger litters.

- The less time orphaned bear cub is in the care of people, the higher the survivorship.

And the GPS tracking collars that we put on these cubs bears that out.

It's a habitat we release him in that we know it's got good natural food supplies and we know it's in a remote area to reduce the chance that this cub encounters human development.

♪ ♪ We had 100% survivorship, meaning those cubs, upon release, figured it out, how to navigate this new landscape.

A lot of times, they'll actually hibernate and go into a den, and then they pop out in spring.

For a couple decades, our goal was to grow more bears.

That's what I like to say-- increase the bear population.

So we've successfully done that.

So now what we are doing is trying to stabilize population growth.

[soft guitar music] - Many artists turn to nature for motivation, and sometimes it's imperfections that provide the most enlightenment.

Our inspiration point comes from a quiet beach on Florida's west coast.

Colin Hare introduces us to an artist who finds objects and treasures that take her in unexpected directions.

- Today's gonna be a fun one.

Headed out to the beach, leaving the mainland.

I'm going to meet a friend of mine, Wendy Angle.

She's a mixed-media artist here in Tampa, and she works a lot in resins.

I'm curious to know what it is about the beach that is so inspiring to her.

- Sometimes you just gotta unplug a little bit and get your feet wet.

[soft music] It's funny, I always say the art is collaborative between me and the piece itself because it's slow art, so everything's very dynamic and you can kind of guide things in the right way, but you don't ever have full control.

But to come out here and to get inspired and to see how something so organic can be placed so beautifully, it's really humbling.

- Here we go.

Honeymoon Island State Park, we're here.

I can see the beach.

It's beautiful.

And there she is, already working.

Wendy!

- Come on down.

- How are you?

- Good.

It's good to see you.

- Good to see you too.

How long have you been out here?

- Not too long.

- Not too long?

Half bucket amount of time?

- Yeah, half bucket full.

It's nice, because when you first walk out here, you can just relax, and you take the whole beach and the whole scene in at once, and it's very peaceful.

As you start walking the beach, you start seeing all the little things.

Those are the things I like to notice and that I love.

- Oh, I like that little guy, though.

Look at that.

Look how that's got, like, the-- - Oh, these are my favorite types.

Yeah, those little cones.

So once you look close, just the tiniest little gem hiding right inside.

I think there's beauty in these barnacle-y pieces, the tiny, little sparkles of the mica shells and the mother of pearls and things like that when they get crushed into the sand.

I am looking for something different, broken shells that not everybody would pick up and want to put in their pocket.

But for me, it does look like a treasure because there's so much more if you just take a closer look and you can really see the life there.

Oh, there's a good one for you.

- Oh, look at that.

That is a good--good eye.

- Look, that's the best of both worlds.

- Look at that.

- Right?

Your favorite.

- Oh, it's even got the barnacles on it.

- And it's really interesting to me to look at it up close.

And then once I put it in my art, I feel like other people are looking at it closely too.

It's so funny.

When you walk on the beach, you're so calm, enjoying the day and the surf and the sounds of the water.

When you're just feeling so at peace, I'll go, oh!

Here it is.

Here's another little treasure.

A lot of my paintings look like-- I try to emulate this look.

- Right where the water-- - The surf coming in-- - The surf comes up.

- Where you can see the white breaking.

The favorite part for me of walking the beach is right where the waves break on shore and you get all that surf and that foam and how it covers the shells, the way it pushes in and pulls back and you feel that movement.

So I try to incorporate movement into the pieces and looking through the different layers and seeing what's hidden under there, what is being revealed.

It's all really interesting to me.

After I walk the beach, you would think I would be nice and calm, but I'm actually recharged, and I'm ready to get messy and to put all the ideas in action.

So I'll go through the shells or little things that I've found.

I'll go through the pictures that I've taken, and then I just hurry up and get to work.

Because once you get that feeling, you just kind of have to get it on the canvas.

It's a special place to unplug.

You can't go too many places around here and feel like you're a million miles out when you're 20 minutes from home and the city.

This is my favorite because this is my home.

I'm lucky that my home base inspires me the most.

[soft guitar music] - Ted Turner changed the world through his news channel, CNN.

He also opened the world's eyes to the planet's environmental challenges, and he had a hand in the success of this program.

As a sportsman, businessman, and philanthropist, Ted Turner only did things big, like helping to conserve the American bison.

- I just thought that was a terrible tragedy that the largest land animal in North America, which is the bison, should be so badly abused.

- Tens of millions of bison once roamed America, but they were deliberately wiped out in a campaign to destroy Native American cultures.

- The restoration from 25 animals to nearly a half a million at this point is a real remarkable story.

- Turner realized the best way to grow the bison population was to make their existence profitable by eating their meat.

So he added restauranteur to his résumé, opening Ted's Montana Grills.

Turner and bison had a lot in common-- spirited, independent, and resilient.

Ted Turner hired Gary Strieker, the founder of this program, as a CNN correspondent in Africa.

Gary dug deep for stories on fragile natural resources and later did the same in the United States.

But here, politicians were not paying much attention to concerns about the environment, so Turner focused some attention on young people.

[gentle music] - On top of this berm, you can put the mulch and then over here, as well, to the edge where that sod is-- shovels and then spread with rake.

No one said it was gonna be easy.

- A class project at an alternative high school in Oregon--building a bioswale to filter oily runoff from a parking lot.

It's a small, hands on, you can see the difference right away strategy for protecting the planet.

- What I do in my ecology class is a topic a day, issues facing the environment or humans in the environment.

I just wanna try to make as many kids as I can aware of these issues, and that they're out there, and then this is their planet.

What you do will make a difference in the future.

- When the five powers combined, they summoned Earth's greatest champion, Captain Planet.

all: Go Planet!

- "Captain Planet," featuring teenagers with superpowers, aired on Turner's Cartoon Network.

- Now that I have ecology class, I like to be outside more and experience nature more because I feel like I know so much more about it.

- The Captain Planet Foundation gave grants so kids could get outdoors, get their hands dirty, and work to protect the Earth.

It also supported our program.

- Who's ready to let their fry go?

all: Me!

[excited chatter] - Just great to see the kids take that responsibility and that ownership over another living organism.

- Do you guys have a wish for your fish?

- I wish that mine would have a safe journey.

- That yours would have a safe journey?

I wish that too.

- We need more kids going into science.

- Diver going down.

- A Captain Planet project in New York City is restoring oyster beds that were overfished for decades and wiped out by development.

- Oysters are ecosystem engineers.

They provide habitat for hundreds of different fish and invertebrates.

- And perhaps channeling Ted Turner in their attitudes, these young people are brutally honest about the perils ahead.

- We're basically fixing 100 years of mistakes that our parents and grandparents made.

- Whenever you do something new and a little bit different, you're gonna get some suspicion and people wondering and so forth.

And that's just human nature.

- The power is yours!

- Thanks for the insight and the follow through, Ted.

[lighthearted music] [soft guitar music] A new generation of environmental journalists report from Ted Turner's remote conservation reserve in Vermejo, New Mexico.

George Washington University's Planet Forward is helping students learn storytelling skills on this vast property that's home to cutthroat trout, bears, elk, and bison.

Both conservation and education are vital parts of ranch operations.

- We are in a classic Ponderosa pine forest.

It is one of the most dominant forest areas on Vermejo.

So Vermejo is a really special place because it has a lot of history, a lot of change, a lot of human disruption.

They clear cut parts of the forest.

They grazed a lot of cattle here in different places, and those change things.

A unique thing about Vermejo is that, since Ted's owned the property, we've been able to do forest restoration work for a couple of decades now.

- The biggest thing that we're striving for is to make everything look different.

We're trying to diversify it, like some openings, thinned-out trees.

We'll leave clumps of complete trees for wildlife.

We've changed quite a bit.

It used to be a forester would come out and mark trees, and it was more of just select stands of timber.

Everything kind of looked the same.

So now we're going for diversity.

- This forest was thinned in 2006, and it looks like a very evenly spaced, even age treatment, where when they thinned it, they kind of took out the worst and left the best.

This area that we're looking at was harvested just a few months ago.

What we're seeing here is more uneven spacing and different age trees.

So here we've got openings, we've got reserve clumps, and we've got an uneven age, different spacing of trees, which is more natural.

The Hydro-Ax cuts all the small stuff.

So these overly dense forests, they're so thick, and there's tons of small trees and regen and brush.

The Hydro-Ax clears all the small stuff out first, and then they come through with the hot saw second and harvest the bigger trees.

All the material gets sent to two different mills.

About the majority of it gets sent to Western Wood Products in Raton.

They mostly make fence posts.

Since 1997, when Ted Turner purchased Vermejo, we've treated 45,000 acres of Ponderosa pine forests.

And future goals for the forest in general is, the more that we can manage the forest with mechanical treatments and fire, I think, the more resilient and healthy that we can make these forests.

[soft guitar music] - Now we'll look at some stories coming up in our next show.

- A lot of people have never seen anything like it, and so they're just in constant amazement and saying, we'll be back.

- The Okefenokee Swamp is a mesmerizing natural treasure.

You will not forget it.

- That's all for now, and thanks for watching.

And be sure to check out our website at environmentnewstrust.com.

And you can always watch our show on PBS Passport.

We'll see you next time.

[dynamic music] ♪ ♪