- 2 days ago
Follow nature photographer as he examines the remaining "wildness" in the Great Plains of North America. A Long Hard Struggle.....
Category
🐳
AnimalsTranscript
00:20The very first time I photographed a burrowing owl, I was lying on my belly in a little blind
00:25on a prairie dog town in South Dakota.
00:32The blind was more like a coffin than anything else, and I had a big telephoto lens trained
00:42on this hole, waiting for the owl to come out of its nest burrow.
00:49Then finally, one evening right at twilight it suddenly appeared, like an actor being lifted
00:59up onto a stage.
01:03When it did, it looked right into the camera, and that fierce look of that tiny little owl
01:09pierced my soul like nothing ever has or probably ever will again.
01:17It was at that moment I realized there is a wild spirit still alive in the Great Plains
01:23of North America, and set me off on an amazing journey.
01:56The Great Plains of North America
01:57was one of the greatest grassland ecosystems on earth.
02:02Stretching nearly one million square miles down the heart of the continent, the prairie
02:07was a place of constant motion.
02:10Shaped by wild swings in climate and an unforgiving cycle of the seasons.
02:16Millions of bison, elk, pronghorn and deer, vast prairie dog towns, top predators like plains,
02:23grizzlies and prairie wolves, massive migrations of birds and fish were common.
02:30But as America grew, this land was settled and tamed.
02:34And in the blink of an eye, most of that wildness was gone.
02:40I decided to try to put a face to the wildlife and native landscapes that still remain, and
02:46take an honest look to see what shape our plains ecosystem was in today.
02:50Along the way, I realized that there is a host of dedicated people working to keep that wildness alive.
03:01Looking down the road, I hope we don't have to have a picture showing the last place we had a
03:05willet nesting in North Dakota.
03:10We see cattle as a tool that we can use to manipulate the surface of the ground to achieve our
03:15conservation values.
03:19Future generations will look at us and shake their heads.
03:22They'll just go, those guys, you know, what they had and what they squandered.
03:30Wild areas and wilderness is really kind of part of who we are as Americans.
03:35We're losing that over time.
03:39We have, you know, made some gains and I think helped industry understand they have to do a better job.
03:48But it's a very long, hard struggle.
03:55I spent a lot of years out here on the prairie.
03:57You start looking at, you know, how do things balance, how do they get out of balance and everything,
04:00and you look around and you're missing, hmm, we're missing, you know, 50 million 2,000 pound animals.
04:08You know, we have to do something here.
04:12You know, people drive through here to get to mountains or to get to forests
04:15and what they miss is the large sweeping landscape, the sea of grass, the ocean, the prairie.
04:22You can't go by at 70 miles an hour and expect to see that.
04:29I want to do my part to keep it and preserve it, you know, the way it is
04:34and hope that, you know, my grandchildren will get to enjoy the same thing that we get to enjoy.
04:42You know, the Great Plains in its moments is every bit as remarkable as the mountains
04:48or the seashore or the canyons, not just of this country but of this world.
04:56This is a gift.
04:59It's our job to be good stewards and take care of it.
05:07I was born and raised in Nebraska
05:09and have been working as a wildlife photographer in the Great Plains for nearly 20 years.
05:15early on, my goal was to make pretty pictures
05:18because I think pretty pictures are important,
05:22especially of a place that is not so well known.
05:31But I've also learned that pretty pictures can be a trap
05:38because they don't always show you what is happening just outside the frame.
05:46The Great Plains helped grow country.
05:48It helps to feed the world.
05:50And increasingly it is being asked to fuel our energy needs.
05:55But now, these same grasslands are among the most altered and least protected regions on Earth.
06:03There is a growing concern that the wildlife they still harbor
06:06and the natural resources we all depend on are being stressed and stretched to their limits.
06:14In the Great Plains, that story begins with our most precious resource, water.
06:25Each spring, over half a million sandhill cranes, the largest gathering of cranes anywhere in the world,
06:32converge on the Platte River Valley in south-central Nebraska.
06:39Here, and in the neighboring rainwater basins, another 20 million migrating waterfowl, shorebirds,
06:45and the rare and endangered whooping crane come to rest and refuel,
06:48packing on weight and nutrients they'll need to finish their migration and be successful at the nest.
06:57These birds travel along an invisible north-south aerial highway called the Central Flyway.
07:06Early explorers and later geographers tried to define the Great Plains from their perspective on the ground.
07:11Over the years, many definitions and boundaries were proposed.
07:17But all of them saw a vast region of grasslands interspersed with eastern-flowing rivers and a fabric of wetlands.
07:28Cranes have been gathering in the Platte Valley since the end of the last ice age.
07:32But today, it is a very different river.
07:36It has been dammed, diverted, and altered to serve our needs.
07:44The once white-braided channel has been reduced by 70%.
07:52In the last century, biologists realized that the river no longer functioned for wildlife like it once did.
08:00Humans now had to take over, clearing sandbars free of vegetation, controlling invasive species, burning prairie,
08:07and protecting what was left.
08:11What has happened to the Platte River has also happened throughout the Great Plains.
08:40500 miles north of the Platte River Valley sits the Missouri Coteau,
08:44a rolling grassland and wetland stronghold in the heart of the Prairie Pothole region,
08:49that stretches across parts of five northern states and three prairie provinces between the U.S. and Canada.
09:01The region is considered North America's duck factory,
09:05where over half of the ducks on the continent breed annually,
09:09typically producing fall flights of a hundred million birds.
09:30Here in the pothole country, you don't just need water, but you need grass.
09:37Because all the ducks and a lot of the shorebirds, they nest in the grasslands.
09:43So if the grass goes away and you leave the water, you've still got the water,
09:46but you don't have the grass anymore, you don't have the places where these birds nest.
09:50You know, you basically eliminate a lot of wildlife habitat pretty quickly.
10:02It's on those edges of day that you live for, when the light sits low in the sky and has
10:07color,
10:08that makes this place come alive during nesting season like few places on the continent.
10:18It's one of the places in the plains that really tugs me back each time.
10:24You don't need to talk a lot about it to show the value.
10:27All you have to do is just sit here for a minute and look.
10:48Just about four meters due south of the...
10:52Scott Stevens is a waterfowl biologist with Ducks Unlimited.
10:57Today, Scott is trying to find grassland nesting birds.
11:02Because they are so well camouflaged, it's nearly impossible to see birds nesting in the prairie.
11:08So biologists use a technique of dragging a chain that skims over the grass,
11:12making just enough disturbance to cause the birds to flush and reveal their nests.
11:17Here it is.
11:22So these are just getting started a couple days into incubation.
11:26So she laid ten eggs and has been setting on these for a couple days.
11:30So she'll have about 22 more days to incubate before these hatch.
11:38Scott and other biologists will record data from thousands of nests throughout the region
11:43to measure hatching success and chick survival.
11:46Three, six, nine...
11:47The information they gather will help them better manage habitats for these birds locally
11:51and will help state and federal agencies set waterfowl hunting seasons
11:55and bag limits up and down the middle of the continent.
11:58Just starting to develop.
12:06The hundreds of thousands of pothole wetlands, many of them no larger than an average-sized swimming pool,
12:13were created here when ice chunks and rubble were left behind by retreating glaciers.
12:19Hilly and covered with rocks, the land was difficult to farm
12:23and most of the native landscape escaped the plow.
12:26But today, things are changing.
12:31All right, go ahead and head east.
12:40The landscape of today in this part of North Dakota tells us a story of hopes realized
12:46and dreams shattered by the harshness of the climate
12:48and the changes that bigger tractors and mechanical implements brought to agriculture.
12:55Although there are fewer farms, the rural population is decreasing.
13:00Now even more grasslands are being plowed up to increase grain production.
13:06They nest in the grass and what we see from the research is that in landscapes where we have a
13:13lot of cropland,
13:13where the grassland's been converted, the success rate is a lot lower.
13:16You know, we use that information to focus our conservation efforts in areas that are still dominated by grass
13:22to keep that grassland intact.
13:26There's a lot of grassland birds nesting out here in these grasses and he's located a willet nest.
13:33Willets are tall migrating shorebirds that winter along the coast but return to the prairie grasslands in the summer to
13:39nest.
13:40With Scott's help, I'm placing a small silent camera next to the nest that can be fired wirelessly with the
13:47walkie-talkie,
13:47trying to make an image that neither of us has seen before, an intimate glimpse of the willet up close
13:54on a nest
13:55that at the same time shows the habitat it calls home.
14:07Looking down the road, I hope we don't have to have a picture showing the last place we had a
14:12willet nesting in North Dakota,
14:13but that's the kind of thing you think about when you think about the challenges to maintaining the grasslands
14:19and the wetlands and the integrity of this system.
14:34In the northern plains, the prairie pothole region is a landscape where even though there seems to be a relative
14:40abundance of water most years,
14:42the quality of the wetlands are increasingly compromised as more grasslands are lost to the plow.
14:51In the southern plains, abundance of water rarely has been a part of the story.
15:04The southern plains is a hotter and more arid landscape,
15:08where the struggle is to find enough moisture to sustain life in a land where the constant wind seems to
15:14blow everything away.
15:17Especially now, after more than a decade of dry times.
15:23Here, shallow wetland basins dot the landscape similar to the prairie potholes we saw in North Dakota.
15:29But these wetlands are called playas, the Spanish word for beach.
15:33On a landscape with little rain and few rivers, the playas sit like buttons on a mattress,
15:41each acting as its own watershed, playing crucial roles for both prairie wildlife and providing a passageway to recharge groundwater
15:49below.
15:51There are more playa basins in the southern plains than anywhere else in the world.
15:56Yet they are among the most endangered wetland types in North America.
16:05In Nazareth, Texas, in the heart of a region called the Llano Estacado,
16:10a group of environmental educators and other volunteers passionately believe that the first step in conservation is appreciation.
16:19They host a series of playa festivals for schools from around the region.
16:24For many kids, it's their first time on a playa.
16:30Playas are the last remaining native habitats left for wildlife.
16:33So all the biodiversity, all the insects, all the mammals, all the birds, all the amphibians, all the reptiles,
16:42depend upon playas in order to survive.
16:48This is a different time of the year to have a playa festival.
16:51This is like the playas waking up.
16:54It's been sleeping all winter, okay?
16:57And then later in the summer, plants will start to grow, especially if there's a heavy rain.
17:03I believe this nest belongs to a red-winged blackbird, or did last year.
17:08Darryl found it on the ground out here.
17:10Maybe it's the bird that we're hearing.
17:12Well, that is a meadowlark.
17:13They make a little bit different nest.
17:15This is a red-winged blackbird nest.
17:17You guys see that? Isn't that cool?
17:20Without water, a playa can look like a dusty bowl.
17:24But upon closer inspection, these kids are beginning to realize they are wellsprings of life.
17:32Plainview Traffic Center in 5318 Victor, taxiing out for takeoff runway 31.
17:39You would not guess by flying over much of this area that this was short grass prairie dominated by buffalo
17:46and prairie dogs and fire as recently as just a little over 100 years ago.
17:53The playas here on the southern high plains of Texas is the largest isolated mesa in North America.
18:01There is no other surface water bodies here, whereas in the central high plains and the northern high plains, there
18:07are other bodies of water, lakes, rivers, streams, and things of that nature.
18:13The playas only cover about 2% of the region's land surface, but they are responsible for 90% of
18:20the biodiversity.
18:23The central part of the southern high plains here, this is probably the most heavily irrigated place in North America.
18:32When they started tapping into the Ogallala Aquifer in the late 1940s down here, early 1950s, this area changed dramatically
18:40due to the availability of water for irrigation.
18:45Another way of defining the Great Plains is by looking at the water that lies beneath our feet.
18:51The mighty Ogallala Aquifer underlies 173,000 square miles of the Great Plains from Texas to South Dakota, and is
19:00one of the largest freshwater aquifers in the world.
19:04In some places, like the Nebraska Sandhills, where it is at its deepest, the top of the aquifer lies so
19:11close to the surface that the water bubbles up in the form of powerful springs, which constantly feed streams and
19:17rivers year-round.
19:22On the southern plains, the aquifer keeps large-scale irrigated agriculture alive.
19:29But even with newer, more efficient sprinklers, irrigation has been so intensive in the past half century that now, in
19:36places, the aquifer is beginning to dry up.
19:39And when playas are plowed up or silted in by runoff from crop fields, they lose their ability to recharge
19:46the aquifer.
19:48Water is life. When you talk about a festival that's based on water, that gets people's interest.
19:54If kids can go outside, then parents and teachers are interested in that because they'll try anything in a way
20:00to get them outside.
20:04We always say, well, if I was around 150 years ago and the buffalo were disappearing, I would have done
20:08something about it.
20:09So I tell them, well, this is the buffalo of today. It's the playas. And now you know.
20:15So you can care about it. You can do something about it.
20:28Just to the west over the New Mexico border, rancher and ornithologist Jim Weaver has invited me to spend a
20:35few days photographing lesser prairie chickens.
20:45Healthy populations of lesser prairie chickens indicates quality habitat.
20:50But throughout much of their range in the southern plains, they've taken a beating.
20:55Their habitats have been overgrazed, fragmented by cropland, and stressed by recurring drought to the point that they are now
21:02a prime candidate for the threatened or endangered species list.
21:08It just seemed to me, having worked many years with endangered species in our base at Cornell University in New
21:16York,
21:17listing the species doesn't help anything.
21:20It brings some attention to the animal, but once it's listed, people seem to lose interest.
21:30This spot where I'm setting up my photoblind is on the edge of a dancing ground called a lek.
21:37Each spring, up and down the Great Plains from Canada to Mexico, the lesser and greater prairie chicken, the sharptail
21:44and sage-grouse gather on leks like this one to compete for the chance to mate.
21:52Some of these leks have been used by these birds for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years.
21:58Unfortunately, throughout the Great Plains, the habitat for many of these birds has shrunk to the point where their future
22:04now is uncertain.
22:07But it doesn't need to be that way.
22:17The basic premise here on this ranch is to optimize the habitat for the prairie chicken and other kinds of
22:23wildlife,
22:24and at the same time, increase the carrying capacity of the ranch.
22:34We've tied all our wells together so we always have livestock and wildlife water throughout.
22:39There's about 60 miles of pipeline on this ranch now.
22:41There's a water point every half to three quarters of a mile throughout the whole place.
22:48There's about 16 weather stations on the ranch that record data all the time, rainfall in particular.
22:59Take a windstorm for instance, we get 110 degrees out here one day and it's blowing 20 miles an hour
23:06or 30 miles an hour,
23:07just after a half an inch of rain fell on the ground, you might as well not have any rain
23:10because it's being evaporated faster than the plants can take it in.
23:20This last 15, 16 years of drought has been particularly problematic for a lot of producers down in this area
23:27of the state.
23:33The Southern Plains was hit hard during the Dust Bowl years.
23:38As tractors became commonplace in the early 1900s and could easily pull an eight bottom plow,
23:44larger tracts of native grassland were plowed under.
23:49Then when severe drought hit the region in the 1930s,
23:52there was no longer any covering of grass with deep roots to hold the soil in place.
24:00This photograph, taken 20 years later in the 1950s, shows just how much of the topsoil blew away.
24:09Prairie grasses evolved to withstand the effects of prolonged drought and periodic fire,
24:14both of which were key shapers in the ecology of the Great Plains.
24:19Their dense mat of roots extends many feet down to draw moisture from the soil,
24:24even if the surface remains dry season after season.
24:33In those times, however, we didn't fully understand the cyclical nature of drought on the Plains.
24:40Now we do, and we know that they can be long and severe.
24:46When they plowed up all of Weld County and a lot of that country,
24:49and even up to Southern Montana, that's where those black rollers came from that they talk about.
24:54That was black dirt, that was all the top layer of real topsoil that took off and disappeared forever.
25:01That was the lifeblood of this whole country.
25:05That's not going to happen again, because it's gone.
25:22Near Jim Weaver's place, we saw what happens when the land is overgrazed,
25:27or asked to produce too many crops with no rest,
25:31or to be put to the plow at all.
25:38And there's plenty of varied houses you'll stumble onto every once in a while out here to prove the point.
26:04This right here is sort of a real juxtaposition, you know, with this abandoned homestead surrounding water.
26:11A little pool of life.
26:16Somebody tried to make a living here, they had good intentions, and it just didn't work.
26:23You just wish that the land could talk.
26:30Back on Jim Weaver's ranch, it is a system of pumping and piping groundwater to restore key habitats that's made
26:37the difference.
26:39According to the old timers here, this was a buffalo wallow in this old playa lake here.
26:45We piped water into this, and filled that basin up.
26:48And, you know, we had a seed base left in this, in this old playa here that just brought all
26:53kinds of things to light.
26:56Everything happened here with that little trickle of water that we turned on.
27:08It wasn't unusual when I first came here in the mid-70s to see a thousand birds a day.
27:14And you tell people that now and they find it hard to believe.
27:17Back in the mid-70s, if you'd have stood here for 15 or 20 minutes, you'd have seen chickens just
27:22flying through the frame of this picture.
27:30I'd like to see a million acres set aside under reasonable management for prairie chickens.
27:39It's a species of animal that really is an indication of ecosystem health, and we're trying to keep it that
27:46way.
28:13From the parched landscape of the southern High Plain,
28:16the Flint Hills of Kansas is an Eden for both grass and water.
28:25The Flint Hills runs long and lean through the eastern third of the state
28:29and across the Oklahoma border.
28:34The rocky soils and broken terrain made it difficult to plow,
28:38so the region became an island of cattle country with large ranches and abundant wildlife.
28:49Now it is the largest remaining tallgrass prairie landscape on earth.
28:57Many watersheds here run clear and clean,
29:00connected by a lacework of rivers and small spring-fed creeks.
29:07These creeks are the ones you seldom give more than a glance to,
29:10driving over on a county road on a summer's day.
29:19But little did I know that in these waters are small native fish
29:23that can be as colorful as those on a coral reef.
29:33Well, we are in the land of Oz, mostly grassland watersheds,
29:40and so the creeks where all the water is coming down has limestone underneath,
29:46and so they're incredibly clear.
29:48There's no agricultural development or anything like that to have siltation or other sort of runoff,
29:55so the grass filters the water, and as it comes into these creeks,
29:58it's just gin clear.
29:59It's almost like a mountain stream.
30:06What we're going to be doing today is snorkeling.
30:11As soon as you submerge underwater, it's just like going into a complete other world.
30:35These long-eared sunfish, which are the color of the Miami Dolphins football team,
30:41they're beautiful, they're like, they should be on a coral reef somewhere.
30:46They've got these little spawning beds, like little white saucers
30:52where they've sort of disturbed the pebbles into a round-shaped pattern.
30:57Looks like a bird's nest, really.
30:59That's where they defend their nest, where they'll lay their eggs,
31:02and then they'll get fertilized, and each one of these sunfish have their own little territory.
31:20How you tell the difference between a mayfly and a stonefly,
31:23the stonefly will have two caudal filaments as opposed to three.
31:27Brian Obermeyer is a biologist who works with the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve.
31:32Brian has spent almost 20 years studying the unique habitats of the Flint Hills.
31:37Well, this is Coyne Creek.
31:39It's an upland prairie stream, and it's unique in that it doesn't have many impoundments or dams above it.
31:49There are some species in here that are indicative of a high-quality stream,
31:55and some of the species are fairly sensitive to pollution,
31:59and also prefer colder water versus warm water.
32:05The Flint Hills sits less than two hours west of Kansas City and two million people.
32:12It has remained relatively free from urban development,
32:17but in recent years there has been pressure to develop the region's water resources,
32:23and wind energy is getting firmly planted in the region.
32:29It's like a work of art to me, these beautiful prairies and prairie streams,
32:36and something that's been around for many thousands of years.
32:40When you come in and you radically change a natural environment,
32:46you typically take something that's very complex and you make it very simple.
32:51It kind of throws the whole system into chaos.
33:03Today we are visiting the Sobel Ranch.
33:05It is the oldest ranch in Kansas to remain in one family's possession since settlement times.
33:12Pat Sobel is the patriarch of the family and proud of the land he has protected.
33:19What do you reckon that is, about 58 degrees, that water temperature?
33:25Something like it was cold enough right here for trout.
33:31Where does all this water come from?
33:34The ground.
33:37It's running really nice now, but it runs nice all the time.
33:43This is Miller Spring, an artesian spring that has been flowing for thousands of years.
33:52Well, right in this area there's a lot of springs, really.
33:57And this little creek of ours was all spring pit.
34:00That's why my grandfather homesteaded in this area.
34:04Well, the dam was going to put it underwater.
34:10Not too many years ago, Pat was one of a group of concerned ranchers and local citizens who successfully opposed
34:17the dam proposal.
34:19For over half a century, Pat sponsored float trips on the creek and spoke out against the dam.
34:26If built, the dam would have flooded these springs, Pat's ranch, and much of the surrounding landscape.
34:39We had a lot of good help from a lot of people.
34:43It wasn't just myself.
34:44We just raised a damn much cane about it.
34:48My gosh, we had the governor out of everybody.
34:52And that was one other big point, I think, that helped keep it from going in.
35:11Going underwater for the first time in a prairie stream is surreal.
35:16When you submerge, water washes over you and you enter this realm of complete and peaceful silence.
35:26In one way, it's not so different than the world above.
35:30There is no wind, but there is current.
35:33There are no colorful songbirds, but there are fish just as beautiful.
35:38This underwater world is light and shadow, in constant motion, and full of life.
35:55Beginning in the late 19th century and continuing to today, the Great Plains has been transformed to a working landscape.
36:03Agriculture drove the biggest changes.
36:06Along with agriculture came towns.
36:09Rail lines and roads connected them.
36:12We built dams and irrigation projects.
36:15Oil and natural gas exploration has resulted in thousands of miles of pipelines.
36:21Today, wind energy is on the rise, promising a clean and inexpensive source of electricity carried on miles of new
36:29transmission lines.
36:31As the needs for more food and more power continue, heavier footprints are being left on the land.
36:37And with those heavier footprints come bigger conservation challenges.
36:43Wind is part of our energy future in Oklahoma and other parts of the U.S.
36:49The issue with wind is it's a sighting issue.
36:51It's not wind is good or wind is bad.
36:53It's all about where you put these turbines.
36:55And if we can put them in areas that don't affect wildlife, it's a great thing.
37:02Near Woodward, Oklahoma, a handful of gypsum caves in the countryside are home to millions of seasonal visitors.
37:14This is the nightly flight of a maternity colony of Mexican free-tailed bats.
37:20Both the adults that came here to have their young and the young are making a nightly flight out of
37:25the cave to find food.
37:27In late summer, this colony can number well over one million individuals.
37:33These bats here migrate to South Texas and Mexico each year and most of them return to the cave that
37:39they were born in to have their own young.
37:41They're really tiny little animals. It's like a small mouse with a set of wings.
37:47Each one of these bats will eat approximately their own weight in insects each night.
37:51They typically only have one young per year and they're long-lived animals.
37:55So if either the young or the parent of the young gets taken out by a predator or it collides
38:01with something and dies,
38:02you've basically eliminated that reproduction for that year.
38:13Bats have the ability to produce sound well beyond the range of human hearing.
38:18So they use these sounds to locate their prey and to avoid obstacles.
38:22It's called echolocation.
38:25We recorded these sounds using special microphones.
38:34Then later we used the same equipment to listen to the ultrasonic noise given off by the wind turbines.
38:47The bats do seem to be attracted to the turbines somehow.
38:51It could be something with the frequency of the sound that the turbines make that interferes with their echolocation.
38:57Or it could be that the air movement attracts insects and then the bats are attracted to those insects.
39:02We just don't know.
39:04We do know that they are killing fairly large numbers of bats.
39:09If the development expands by a factor of 10 as it's projected to do in the next 20 years.
39:14If that development occurs in close proximity to some of our bat caves,
39:19that could be a major issue for bat conservation going forward.
39:30Wild areas and wilderness is really kind of part of who we are as Americans.
39:38A lot of our culture is based on that interaction with the environment and that sort of rugged individualism that's
39:44built into our psyche.
39:45I mean that comes from our interaction with the natural world.
39:48We're losing that over time.
39:50So I think it becomes more important every day that we protect what we have left.
39:53And this isn't perfect for Rome.
40:03With that an icon, it should be the most part in the background of Challenge League yay!
40:04If you want to see that, I'll see a little bit about that.**
40:26The Great Plains is not known for its vertical relief, but in most places, the landscape
40:32is anything but flat.
40:40Near Sheridan, Wyoming, in the shadow of the Bighorn Mountains, Jill Morrison and Dave
40:45Clarendon make a life as cattle ranchers in the heaving hills of the Powder River Basin.
40:58The Powder River is the last undammed river in the American West, and until recently was
41:04considered a healthy remnant of a once unspoiled river.
41:11Now the land is increasingly fragmented by energy development.
41:17But the really big problem with these is you leave a bigger footprint than you want on
41:24your place, or at least than we want.
41:26This country, all this country back here was horseback until about five years ago.
41:29And now you can drive anywhere.
41:41Wyoming is energy rich and has long been home to one of the most productive coal fields in
41:46North America.
41:48America.
41:49In recent years, natural gas extraction in the form of coal bed methane has boomed.
41:57The process involves drilling a well down into the coal seam, then pumping out the groundwater
42:02which releases the trapped natural gas, allowing it to flow out into the well and be pumped to
42:08the surface.
42:10Natural gas is a relatively clean fuel, but this extraction process is not without controversy.
42:17Sheridan Traffic, Skyhoppy 246 Bravos, taxi on to runway 32.
42:22We'll give way to the tail dragger.
42:27The great thing about being in the air photographing is it gives the viewer an entirely different
42:33perspective.
42:34It's a really important perspective, I think, when you're talking about conservation, when
42:38you're talking about any sort of land use.
42:41You can see right up to the right up here, and you can start to see the network of roads
42:47and well pads.
42:50Mostly the red shale roads are the real identifier.
42:55You can see how it really fragments the landscape.
42:59Oh, absolutely.
43:00It really chops it up.
43:03Jill works with the Powder River Basin Resource Council.
43:06They help provide a voice for concerned citizens who want to protect their land from unwanted
43:12development and its effects on grasslands and water quality.
43:16I think the important thing for people to realize is that natural gas development is
43:22not a clean fuel.
43:24The production end of it is very dirty and very intensive on the landscape.
43:29We really need to think about how we use energy and to be much more efficient with our
43:34energy use.
43:39In Wyoming and other places in the Great Plains, some landowners don't own the subsurface rights
43:45to their properties, which leaves them vulnerable.
43:50At some point, you know, this will hear back in.
43:54I always say that we're going to be remembered in Wyoming as the dirt moving culture.
43:59You know, running a backhoe is a national sport here.
44:01But that pad will be there for 100,000 years.
44:08Our concern, and that's why we want all this baseline data, is that the contamination comes
44:12from the coal bed methane water being pumped out to get the gas, and then they just dump
44:17the water down these types of drainages.
44:19It's not the same water quality, which causes a lot of changes in the whole system.
44:25It salts it up.
44:28And so then you get all this salt-tolerant grass species that isn't conducive to wildlife or livestock.
44:39You've messed up that whole system.
44:47We realize Wyoming is the energy capital of the country.
44:54It's supplying probably 10% of the country's energy with coal and oil and gas.
45:02And we realize it's important.
45:04It's just, there's a better way to do it.
45:08Smaller footprint.
45:10Good bonding requirements for the industry.
45:14Good reclamation.
45:17Future generations will look at us and shake their heads.
45:21They'll just go, phew, those guys.
45:24You know, what they had and what they squandered.
45:28I don't know, I just look at the intangibles.
45:31You know, yeah, the money's nice.
45:32You know, and they certainly, they're more than willing to pay.
45:36But I just think there's more, you know, there's more to life than just chasing the dollar all the time.
45:44We have, you know, made some gains and I think helped industry understand they have to do a better job.
45:54But it's, it's a very long, hard struggle.
45:58Good school жиз
46:00Now, before we go back, we looked right there.
46:40300 miles to the east of Sheridan, Wyoming, some of the largest prairie dog towns in
46:45North America still exist, stretching across Buffalo Gap National Grassland and Badlands
46:50National Park in western South Dakota.
46:56At a glance, the prairie dog town can look like a lifeless wasteland, but walk through
47:02a town and imagine what lies beneath the surface, and it's a different story.
47:11Prairie dogs are keystone species upon which over a hundred other wildlife species, not
47:16including insects, depend on for food or shelter.
47:24They transformed the landscape with their towns in complex tunnel systems below ground.
47:30Combined with massive herds of bison, prairie dogs were key drivers on the prairie landscape
47:35before settlement.
47:40But that was then.
47:42Today, prairie dog numbers are a shadow of what they once were, and now they are struggling
47:48with a silent but deadly invader, plague.
47:53It finally reached prairie dog towns in South Dakota in 2004.
48:01The loss of prairie dog populations here means that another very rare species is also under
48:06a severe threat.
48:10some of it is a mystery.
48:12We really don't know a lot about black-footed ferrets.
48:16We've known about them in terms of science for 150 years, but we really don't know how
48:21their populations function.
48:23There's still a lot of things that go on because it happens at night under the cover of darkness
48:27and below ground.
48:31Travis Livieri is a biologist who has spent his entire adult life devoted to the recovery
48:37of the black-footed ferret.
48:40Since the ferrets are most active above ground at night, Travis spends more than half the year
48:45working the night shift in an effort to trap and vaccinate the elusive creatures.
48:52The black-footed ferrets are completely nocturnal, not to say that you won't see them during
48:57the day, but really the best way to find them is at night with a spotlight, looking for their
49:02eyeshine as they poke their heads up on a prairie dog burrows.
49:08Even before much was known about the black-footed ferret, the species was under tremendous pressure
49:13because its food source, the prairie dog, was being systematically poisoned and shot off
49:18the prairie, a competitor with cattle for forage and considered a pest by most ranchers.
49:25As the prairie dog declined, the black-footed ferret and the other species that rely on prairie
49:30dogs either for food or shelter declined too.
49:34Today roughly 2% of black-tailed prairie dog habitat survives.
49:40Despite long odds, the black-footed ferret is a conservation success story.
49:47Once thought extinct, a small group of animals were rediscovered in 1981 on a ranch near Matitsi, Wyoming.
49:57After those few ferrets started to succumb to disease, the last 18 were captured and bred in captivity.
50:05Their offspring began to be reintroduced into the wild in the 1990s.
50:10One of the first reintroduction sites was here on Buffalo Gap National Grassland.
50:17Travis Livieri was a grad student then, working with the first group of ferrets to be released.
50:30People sometimes ask me, why should we recover black-footed ferrets? It's a moral question.
50:36We put black-footed ferrets in jeopardy through our human activities.
50:40I think that we have an obligation to give it our best shot to restore them.
50:48The ferrets feed almost exclusively on prairie dogs.
50:52So when prairie dogs get infected with plague, there is a high chance that the ferrets will get the plague
50:57too.
50:58And it is fatal.
51:04Wildlife biologist Randy Greeble is in charge of a dusting crew whose job is to limit the spread of the
51:10plague throughout Kanata Basin's prairie dog population.
51:17When we planned on where we were going to dust early in this process,
51:20we focused in on the key prairie dog towns that had the most ferrets in it.
51:28And what happens is, any fleas that are running inside the burrow,
51:32that come out the burrow opening or whatever, they walk on the dust, they're dead. Kills them.
51:36The prairie dogs, likewise, as they move in and out of the burrow, they get it on their fur and
51:40their skin,
51:40they're digging around, things like that. You get about 10 to 12 months of effectiveness out of it.
51:45That's why we have to dust every year. So we've lost roughly half of the habitat.
51:51The only reason we have what we got left now is because we dusted pretty extensively.
51:56Even if the entire basin was wiped out except for what we've dusted,
52:00we figured we could save probably two-thirds of the population.
52:13By dawn, we've pretty much given up on being able to see a black-footed ferret up close.
52:18But then...
52:45Currently there's about a thousand in the wild, and about three hundred in captivity.
52:49So from 18 individuals, we've come quite a way.
52:55But we're far from finished yet.
53:00But I'm proud to say that black-footed ferrets are no longer the most endangered mammal in North America.
53:08They're just such a charismatic little species.
53:11When you look in those eyes, they kind of look into you a little bit and grab you.
53:21Come out to the prairie sometime.
53:24Turn off your cell phone.
53:25Take out your iPod and everything else out of your ears.
53:29Come sit down on the prairie and just listen to the wind.
53:34Smell the grass.
53:36Absorb this ecosystem.
53:38It's not something everybody's familiar with.
53:40It's a very different kind of place.
53:42You just have to look for the beauty.
53:44It's there.
53:46Be quiet. Absorb it. You'll find it.
54:12For over two centuries, we have asked more and more of the Great Plains.
54:17Now for some species, even survival is in question.
54:21Yet there are those who look to the future and see opportunities for restoration and renewal.
54:28Some of the biggest challenges are the fact that people have forgotten what the potential of this place is.
54:34Join us for part two of Great Plains, America's Lingering Wild.
55:00To learn more about Great Plains, America's Lingering Wild, visit PBS.org.
55:07This series is available on DVD.
55:10To order, visit shoppbs.org or call us at 1-800-PLAY-PBS.
55:17The first book darüber at Dave for our best friends at IM.
55:17If anybody can choose from it.
55:17For seven years,いた은 marinara, visit aid communities.
55:21To learn more about miracle centers comes to buyabilities coronavirus.
55:21Who can't even show personal experiences again at all?
55:30The most part goals.
55:31We'll get to have faith at You!
55:40From today's