- Just ahead on "This American Land"... [wolves howling] Anytime wolves and livestock are together, there's going to be conflict.

Meet some humans helping keep the peace.

- The reason we focus on coexistence rather than conflict-- coexistence is about achieving outcomes.

- ♪ Old man river ♪ I'm hoping to educate enough people that, a hundred years from now, this river is a healthy ecosystem.

- The mighty Mississippi: celebrating its past and protecting its future in a most creative way.

And along another of America's great rivers, a sense of hope.

- If you just give rivers a nudge, the river knows what to do.

- So hang on tight.

"This American Land" starts now.

[dynamic music] ♪ ♪ - Hey, everybody.

Welcome to "This American Land."

I'm your host, Ed Arnett.

And our first story is about an animal that's been reviled and revered by human cultures.

Wolves are admired for their beauty and strength or demonized as threats to livestock and game animals.

Wolves once occupied every state in the U.S., but by 1960, after decades of deliberate eradication, they almost disappeared.

Humans returned wolves to Yellowstone in 1995, and their populations have grown.

We now find gray wolves in Colorado, but this time in a slightly different way.

[soft music] ♪ ♪ [wolves howling] - I've worked on a bunch of different species in my career, and nothing is as polarizing as wolves are.

It's a challenging, challenging, challenging thing.

Wherever wolves and livestock share the landscape, there's going to be conflict, and wolf management is all about managing that conflict.

Wolves are pretty timid, pretty shy of people.

They are not in the business of trying to interact with people.

My name is Eric Odell.

I'm the Wolf Conservation Program Manager for Colorado Parks and Wildlife.

[exciting music] - Colorado has been preparing since 2004 for a natural influx of wolves from the Yellowstone population, but voters sped up that process in November 2020, when they approved a ballot measure to reintroduce gray wolves to the state.

[soft music] ♪ ♪ - We did do our first year of reintroductions in 2023, and the ten wolves that we reintroduced all came from Oregon.

It was a sense of accomplishment, a sense of relief.

Fatigue as well.

All of this effort had come to it, and-- so, this is a map of Colorado.

The Continental Divide in the center of the state.

City of Denver is right here, and then as you go further west, this is the general area where we did our reintroductions.

- We believe that there would never be a substantial number of wolves in the state without a little help from us to basically prime the public for their presence, and to build a little tolerance around the idea of having wolves on the ground.

- Many critics called Proposition 114 ballot box biology.

In other words, voting public deciding on an issue that, perhaps, is best left with professionals.

The measure passed with a razor thin margin.

And the chasm between wolf advocates and many in the state, especially ranchers, seemed as deep as the Continental Divide is long.

- It's an unfortunate reality that we have began to witness an increasing political agenda around wildlife management.

- Gaspar Perricone works on his family's ranch near Steamboat Springs, but he also advocates for thousands of hunters and anglers in Colorado.

- It's hard to imagine that the public brings to bear the background and expertise to ensure that the votes that they are taking square up with what constitutes sound wildlife management.

- Said it wasn't just the ranchers, it was the whole Western slope.

It was the little old ladies shopping downtown, or the tourists coming through.

Everybody had a reaction against having one part of the state tell another part of the state what they should do.

- Ranchers were deeply concerned about wolf impacts to their livestock, and whether they would be compensated for their losses while hunters fear wolves will kill too many deer and elk, hunted species that generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the state's economy, and revenues that are critical for the wildlife agency's management programs that benefit all wildlife and citizens.

But conflict and conservation usually don't work well together.

- We find that as people kind of are divided, as conflict occurs, it spirals.

People stop talking to each other, they stop agreeing on anything, and ultimately, they stop seeing each other as almost real people.

- I'm with Dr. Mireille Gonzalez with the Center for Human- Carnivore Coexistence.

So, Ray, what are some of the approaches that your center and yourself utilize to resolve these conflicts?

- The reason we focus on coexistence rather than conflict is because coexistence is about achieving outcomes.

- Once it was evident that wolves were going to be reintroduced and become part of Colorado's landscape, something happened, and people started talking to each other.

- I think it's a choice of, you have to decide if you're going to be a victim, or if you're going to be proactive.

[jaunty country music] ♪ ♪ - By anyone's account, rancher Jo Stanko is a leader and a bridge builder in Colorado's ranching community.

- Jo is, like, she can connect with anybody.

She's just a force of nature.

- She's an icon in the community.

She is.

- She's no nonsense, and her humor brought people together as wolves took up residency.

This is a fairly unique group, and none of you knew each other before the wolf issue came about.

How did you get to know each other?

- CSU hosted CCRG, which is the Colorado Conflict Reduction Group.

But Jo walked in, and we both were at the coffee table.

And she said, "Where's the wine?"

[laughter] And I said, I'm going to sit by her.

- It was a comfortable meeting where people were honest with each other.

- Jo and wolf advocate Courtney Vail have been bonding ever since.

In their discussions, ranchers shared their frustrations that many urban folks don't know the struggles of raising livestock.

- Okay, hang on.

It gets rough here.

- Those are the things.

- So, Jo, it looks like it's calving season around here.

That's pretty important for the ranch, isn't it?

- It is.

It is.

This represents a lot of our time.

[cow moos] - Time on Jo's ranch provides a learning experience.

- Every herd has a boss cow.

- I could see that boss cow chasing off a wolf.

Oh, yeah.

- Courtney and I are friends, and she came and helped me save a calf.

Not everybody will step into your house and help you blow dry a calf, you know?

- Yeah.

- Some trust developed when funds became available for practical, non-lethal tools ranchers could use to discourage wolf attacks on their livestock.

Matthew Collins is with the Western Landowners Alliance.

- We want to make sure folks have the resources they need to reduce conflicts.

And we've worked with a broad group of folks, specifically the Natural Resource Conservation Service, to bring cost sharing and payment opportunities for range riding, carcass management, fencing, these important conflict prevention tools.

- While those tools may help, there's a bigger cost from a wolf attack than just replacing an animal.

Ranchers have a profound respect for their livestock, and any loss to a predator is troubling beyond just the dollars and cents.

- Our job is to take care of these animals and keep them alive and keep them comfortable.

We've experienced multiple predations out here.

I think we're at seven or nine.

A lot of people don't have cows, but it's the same if it was one of your pets.

- After their livestock losses, Don Gittleson and his son, Dave, recently met with other ranchers and public officials to share their experiences.

Dave says they're working all day on the ranch and also spending many nights trying to scare wolves away from their cows.

- It just is a lot of wear and tear on your body.

That is no way to really explain it.

You have stress on animals.

You have the headache.

You have the working all day trying to get the proof that it was a wolf kill.

- Wolf reintroductions in the U.S. are a huge conservation success story, but they inherently come with conflict and compromise.

More wolf reintroductions are planned over the next three to five years in Colorado, and there will be more challenges.

- Ranchers and conservationists have the same goal, so we need to work on the things that we have in common.

- Coexistence is a balance, and it's a give and take.

And we're part of the natural world, and I think wolves remind us of that.

- As a state agency, restoration of species is a big deal, a big part of what we do.

And this is real.

We have wild wolves in Colorado, and we did that.

[dynamic music] - It's an incredible thing to have this houseboat and live on the river.

Be out here as much as I want.

And you're on what I call river time.

You really don't want a watch or clock on the river.

- A life on the river devoted to the river.

Steve Marking is a singer, storyteller, and photographer who captures the spirit and mystery of the mighty Mississippi.

He calls himself The Riverlorian.

Brad Hicks shows us how he reveres the river's past, and why he worries about its future.

- We are on our way.

[mellow music] ♪ ♪ ♪ Old man river ♪ - When Steve Marking takes you down memory lane... - This is the house I grew up in.

- It's through a backwater channel on the Mississippi River.

♪ But don't say nothing ♪ - What was it like for you growing up here on the river?

- It was magical, but I thought magical was normal.

♪ He keeps on rolling along ♪ [birds chirping] These birds that you hear, the symphony.

[birds chirping] [ducks quacking] [birds honking] [sentimental music] - As a young man, he left his Wisconsin home and that symphony of bird songs to create his own music on the East Coast in the opera.

- [singing in Italian] - The fall migration is just incredible here.

- A quarter century later, Old Man River beckoned him back to the Upper Mississippi.

When did you feel the call to the river?

- 2009.

[camera shutter snaps] [gentle music] I'd been home and taken some pictures of the river.

I was planning a concert, and I was collecting some river songs.

So I had the pictures running in the background, and I did it in Cambridge, New York.

But then I realized that my voice could actually make a difference.

And it wasn't a year later, I moved back home.

♪ There's an old man called the Mississippi ♪ ♪ That's the old man that I'd like to be ♪ And I felt like me again.

And that's when I realized this is what I have to do.

So I'm a Riverlorian no matter where I am.

- A voice of the river.

A voice for the river.

Sharing its stories, songs, science, and spirit.

His home is a houseboat.

His backyard, the backwaters.

The real Mississippi.

People watching this story right now, seeing this beautiful spot might look at that and go, that doesn't look like the Mississippi River behind them.

The Mississippi River is big and wide and huge, and here we are, in this beautiful backwater.

- That's absolutely right.

Before the locks and dams went in, it was a braided river.

It didn't have a main channel.

Main channel is a navigation thing.

Until we started shipping up and down the river, it was a 2-mile wide flood plain.

[plane engine buzzing] [soft music] ♪ ♪ - You can see the braided backwaters even better from the sky.

- We're able to see down into these places that even a boat can't get to.

- Steve is getting shots for his live riverboat show, "The Mighty Mississippi"... What a shot.

In which he sings the songs and tells the stories of the river, from the headwaters in Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico.

But these backwaters, brimming with life, almost disappeared a hundred years ago.

The federal government was ready to turn hundreds of miles of floodplain into farmland, just as it had done in the South.

Will Dilg, a liquor salesman from Chicago, was furious the plan would drain his favorite summer fishing spots along the Upper Mississippi.

So he formed a conservation group to take on Washington, and called it The Izaak Walton League, after the author of what is considered the Bible of fishing.

Two years later, in 1924, President Calvin Coolidge signed a bill saving the backwaters by creating the 261-mile long Upper Mississippi Wildlife and Fish Refuge, the longest floodplain habitat in America.

Steve now portrays Will Dilg in film and on stage.

- I've been given some time to return to this glorious place, have a look around, and visit with you all.

- In his production, "A Visit from Will Dilg," the founder of The Izaak Walton League returns to the refuge 100 years later, pleased with what's been preserved, but troubled by what's happening in the backwaters.

- Yeah, he'd have something to say, good and bad.

- And he's saying it through you.

- And he's saying it through me.

- The locks and dams, added in the 1930s after Will Dilg's death, opened the river to shipping but also slowed its flow, gradually filling the backwaters he had saved with sediment, strangling the sloughs.

- This is kind of a typical backwater slough that has filled in.

The duckweed starts filling in when you lose flow.

That means no sunlight can get through.

And this duckweed releases its oxygen into the atmosphere, not down into the water.

- Not good for fish.

- Not good for fish or any creature down there that needs oxygen.

[soft unsettling music] Nothing can live there.

- From the backwaters... What is this place?

- This is Great Spirit Bluff.

- To the bluffs, the Upper Mississippi Wildlife and Fish Refuge stretches through what is called the driftless region, an area untouched by glaciers during the Ice Age, where overlooks tower above the river in all directions.

We've come here for one last question.

Is this human infrastructure that's been built on the river, is it sustainable?

- It can be.

I think the way we're going right now, it's not.

We're losing our diversity because of the man-made structures of the locks and dams.

And so it's becoming an ecosystem that's really challenged.

But I'm hoping to educate enough people that, 100 years from now, this river is a healthy ecosystem.

This is what I have to do with the rest of my life.

♪ Old man river ♪ ♪ That old man river ♪ ♪ He must know something ♪ ♪ Don't say nothing ♪ ♪ He just keeps rolling ♪ ♪ He keeps on rolling along ♪ [dynamic music] - Let's head west now to another crucial waterway.

About 40 million people have ties to the Colorado River and its watershed.

Some depend on it for drinking water.

Others delight in it for recreation.

Dave Showalter shares his love for this river through his photographs.

[soft music] - I've been a photographer for 30-plus years, and in late 2015, I heard an expert who should have known better say the Colorado River is dying.

And that really tweaked me in a way where I thought, you know, I have something to say about that.

I'm Dave Showalter.

I've been a photographer for 30-plus years.

[camera shutter snaps] From hearing people say the river is dying and seeing all these pictures of white bathtub rings around reservoirs, a lot of that discussion is about what I call the plumbing system, where there's lots of dams and diversions.

If you live in the Denver metro area, about 50% or 60% of your water comes from right here.

And it's important to understand the whole dynamic of the watershed, where there's so many straws in the river pulling water, that's a part of the story.

But all of these rivers have to flow to reach those downstream users.

And as these rivers flow, there is life.

And I felt nobody's going to care unless we take them to the river.

Unless they learn where their water comes from and start to develop that line of thinking around, what's my place in this watershed, as one of 40 million people?

If we're telling stories through people who are doing great work, then there's a lot of inspiration in that, right?

And Kirk is a community builder.

- My name is Kirk Klancke.

I'm the president of the Colorado River Headwaters Chapter of Trout Unlimited.

- Kirk did an amazing thing over time where he developed a relationship with Denver Water, where they didn't used to really have good, productive conversations, that they built this learning-by-doing project and came together to restore a section of the Fraser River, which is this area right here, restore the willows-- you can see the willows are burgeoning.

The yellow warblers are singing their heads off in the willows.

That's that idea that if you just give rivers a nudge, the river knows what to do.

- I think real conservation starts with a conversation, which leads to collaboration.

When both parties mutually agree on working together, you get so much done.

[gentle music] - I love the yellow warbler.

I love them for their beauty and also for their story.

Just how they use the habitats to, you know, link big chunks of North America.

We're just upstream from Adams Falls here.

This is a great place for American dippers.

They're our only aquatic songbird, and they'll eat the same stuff that trout do.

They've been called a trout with feathers, and they really like turbulent waters.

All of this is snow melt from the top of the Rocky Mountains, off the Continental Divide.

There is hope in the Colorado River, and there's hope in that there's 40 million of us who are still attached to this river as part of a watershed community.

Go to the river.

Go to the river and learn where your water comes from.

If we just start speaking for the river, and we do that as a community, we start to change the culture and the conversation and the narrative.

And that's what the river needs right now.

And we'll know what to do.

We'll be able to address these things, and we'll find solutions.

And I just want people to leave with the idea that, yeah, there's an abundance of hope for the Colorado River.

[dynamic music] - Near the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina, residents are celebrating thousands of acres of rugged mountain land now permanently protected.

This conservation milestone in the Maggie Valley area was 20 years in the making.

When local leaders realized the need to protect their drinking water, they got assistance from the U.S. Forest Service's Forest Legacy Program.

Conservation easements and land purchases also protected the watershed.

The Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy donated nearly 450 acres for a public park on Chestnut Mountain.

Along with hiking, biking, and other recreation, this land will permanently protect wildlife habitat and keep trout streams cool and clean.

Tourism experts in Western North Carolina tell us if people enjoy an area, they will work harder to take care of it, they are better prepared for climate change and development pressures, and their kids and grandkids can share the land with local wildlife.

Let's meet some of the people who treasure the Blue Ridge Parkway and all it has to offer.

[soft music] ♪ ♪ - The Blue Ridge Parkway is a linear national park stretching more than 450 miles from Virginia down through North Carolina.

And what it's done is link a lot of these rural communities together, but it's also been an incredible tourism draw for some of these areas.

- Well, you certainly see the Smokies, and you can probably see into Tennessee.

And it's just beautiful.

It's breathtaking.

There's no place like it.

- I mean, you can go to the Rockies, you can go to the Cascades in Washington or Alaska, but there's really nowhere else in this world or even in this country that's like the Blue Ridge Mountains here.

- I like it because you can see the sunset in one direction and the moon rise in the other.

- The Land and Water Conservation Fund has protected tracks along the Blue Ridge Parkway to ensure that the visitor experience stays the same, that the inspiring viewsheds are unimpeded by incompatible development, and that visitors leave refreshed and renewed after seeing some of the most spectacular fall foliage or sunrises or sunsets along the Blue Ridge Parkway.

[water rushing] [fishing reel ratcheting] - Wild trout streams are the lifeblood of a lot of the cultural history of this part of Appalachia.

[gentle music] ♪ ♪ - More pavement leads to higher runoff coming from that pavement, and that pavement heats up the water when it's running off of it, so it leads to higher water temperatures.

Fish don't like that.

Trout love cold water.

- Yeah!

- We like it shady.

We like it good for trout so that people can come up here and experience what this has got to offer.

- So I'm looking over your shoulder, Neil, at 1,600 acres owned by The Nature Conservancy, and we've got acreage here owned by The Conservation Fund.

Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy over that ridge.

What does that add to the Blue Ridge Parkway corridor?

- Protecting those vistas.

That's what people come here to see.

- In every county and every state, local people are identifying their own conservation need and then reaching out to their local land trusts or to one of the national conservation organizations and begging them to buy their land to add it to the conservation mix.

These are projects that support local economies and support what the locals want, and that's conservation and recreation opportunities that are close to home.

[dynamic music] - Now a look at a story from our next show.

- This is a beaver canal.

This is one of their water highways.

- We've always known beavers are brilliant.

Now they're into artificial intelligence?

- And what is EEAGER stand for?

- EEAGER stands for Earth Engine Automated Geospatial Elements Recognition Model.

- [laughs] This is AI.

- Yes, this is AI, but for beavers.

- That's our show for today, and thanks for watching.

We'll see you next time on "This American Land."

- You can always watch us on PBS Passport.

[dynamic music] ♪ ♪