- Coming up on "This American Land," ruffed grouse are quirky birds facing threats from habitat loss.

- We know how to recover grouse-- getting partners on board, pulling in the same direction.

[sheep bleating] - Collecting rays while the animals graze.

There's a new concept called agrivoltaics on some farms.

- Why wouldn't we try to produce energy, food, and conserve water in all the same space?

- The heroes protecting our natural resources are ready to strut their stuff right now.

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

I'm your host, Ed Arnett.

And we've got some great stories for you this week featuring dedicated professionals and volunteers working to tackle today's conservation challenges.

Across Appalachia, foresters, biologists, hunters, and conservation groups are working together to help stabilize populations of ruffed grouse.

A decline in young forest has led to steady declines for this popular, captivating game bird, and we found that answers to the bird's recovery involve some unexpected partnerships and forest restoration tactics that are sometimes bold and unexpected.

We start our journey in Tennessee.

- This is what we would classify as a young forest.

This stand provides ideal conditions for grouse with regard to cover.

It was harvested about 13 years ago.

And especially for males, they like to have dense cover when they're drumming.

[wings flapping] I'm Craig Harper, professor of wildlife management and the extension wildlife specialist at the University of Tennessee.

[twangy guitar music] - Managing a forest to stabilize ruffed grouse numbers can benefit other species as well as local economies.

And while it may sound counterintuitive to some folks, sometimes the healthiest prescription to revitalize a forest is to cut some of it down.

- People often think that if you cut a tree, or if you cut the trees in a forest, the forest has been destroyed.

Especially in these hardwood systems, they regenerate naturally.

We are standing here in late May, and by June of next year, there will be young trees about as tall as you and I on this site.

[upbeat guitar music] - This is the Chuck Swan State Forest near Knoxville.

Ethan Worthington and the Tennessee Department of Forestry are working hard to create young forests and a mosaic of forest types to benefit both wildlife and people.

- Every single stand within the forest can be found on this map, and we can see our data and notes on them.

So that's a 9-acre stand, oak-hickory.

The clear cut was recommended for 2025.

- A less dramatic type of regeneration is a shelterwood harvest.

That's when a percentage of the trees are cut, but high-quality oaks are left to provide acorns for grouse and other wildlife and to reseed the forest.

[machines whirring] Throughout Appalachia, sawmills and logging operations have closed recently due to a decline in timber markets.

However, in Southwest Virginia, five generations of the Turman family have managed to survive and thrive by diversifying their operations and global marketing.

In doing so, they're helping to create young forests to benefit threatened wildlife and supporting local communities.

- There's this misconception through the years that people in the sawmill business are against the environment.

[machines whirring] What are y'all working on?

There's not a person out there that wouldn't rather be out in the forest right now and hunting.

They love being out in nature.

The rural America, it's an absolute treasure.

And people taking care of the land, that's just always sort of been a part of it.

♪ ♪ So when you go through and you log, the habitat that you're building for wildlife is unbelievable.

As the new growth starts to come back, you're creating an ideal habitat for so many species.

- A far-reaching grouse plan also requires new and creative public and private partnerships.

West Virginia University's Chris Lituma and his students work with the timber giant Weyerhaeuser.

- As a biologist now, what I know is that it's not a one size fits all.

So what a partner like Weyerhaeuser is able to provide is this massive amount of land where they have total control, and we can have a conversation with them about how they might coordinate those cuts that would create almost like a patchwork of different forest classes or forest structures.

♪ ♪ - On the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia, the U.S. Forest Service and West Virginia Division of Wildlife Resources have worked closely together for decades to restore lands left damaged by surface coal mining.

The Forest Service bought this 44,000 acres on top of Cheat Mountain and collaborated with groups like Green Forest Work to mimic Mother Nature's restoration.

[engine revving] Foresters and biologists took some risks, literally ripping up the compacted lands left from mining activities.

And those bold actions have paid off.

- What we'd like to see is, we'd like to go from this to this.

You'll see that there's a lot of growth in here compared with the grasslands over here or the grass only over here.

This area has lots of different age trees in here that we've planted, and it's working because we've ripped the ground.

We've made it to where water will sink in.

And now we have wetlands through here.

So you have millions of acres out there in mine land that could be productive, healthy areas.

And we're getting this area healthy again.

- Just look at some of the results they're already seeing.

Wildlife that need these young forests are returning and thriving on these once barren lands.

- What excites me the most is just to see how resilient nature is.

Our goal with this project was to basically reset the ecological clock and then get out of the way and let nature take back over.

These bigger aspen here we planted.

All of these smaller aspen came up on their own from the roots of the bigger aspen that we had planted.

- For the folks who care about these lands, it's more than a job.

Forestry and wildlife specialists work hand in hand to manage resources on the Kumbrabow State Forest in West Virginia.

- Well, a lot of what we've looked at today-- getting to see the work on the ground, getting to see projects from start to finish years later, the direct result of your labor, and knowing that that's made a positive impact on the forest, public land in West Virginia, that it'll be here for generations to come.

- I think we've done a good job here.

I hear 10 or 12 species of birds singing right here where we're sitting-- Canada warbler, magnolia warbler, chestnut-sided warbler, indigo bunting.

There's the age of the trees from small to big.

There's nooks, crannies, coves, holes in the canopy, sunlight getting to the ground.

- There's plenty of evidence these partnerships are working to provide a diversity of habitats needed for all wildlife.

But there's a need to do a better job convincing the public they're on the right path for the grouse and for the next generation.

It may look ugly and scruffy for a while, but cutting timber and prescribed burns can be a healthy answer to a forest future and a salvation for wildlife that need young forests.

Kentucky biologist Zak Danks was a leader in the eastern grouse management plan, a regional effort to raise awareness of the status of grouse and promote its conservation.

- I hope the greater public who may never hunt grouse, may never even see a grouse, understand that it's a nuanced challenge.

We know how to recover grouse, getting partners on board like our forestry agencies, our forest industry, along with environmentalists who care about things for other reasons, perhaps, working together, pulling in the same direction.

- Conservationists working on ruffed grouse hope the sound of spring continues in the Appalachians.

[wings flapping] [light guitar music] ♪ ♪ [sheep bleating] - Yes, that's sheep under those solar panels.

For centuries, farmers and ranchers have had to be innovators in order to survive.

Agrivoltaics is one of those experiments combining agricultural production with solar power on the same plots of land.

Correspondent Brad Hicks shows us how the concept is growing as more farming operations look for new and sustainable sources of revenue.

[gentle piano music] - When the sun comes up over Littleton, Colorado, it's not just the start of a new day at Chatfield Farms.

- I am passionate about clean energy.

- It's the beginning of a new era.

- This is our very first crop that we have planted.

- We heard that word over and over as we crossed Colorado to learn about agrivoltaics.

- The first installation.

- This first project.

- The first of that kind.

- The first work.

- The first grape agrivoltaic project in the nation.

- We have seven different varieties of potatoes.

- Josie Hart is the farmer at Chatfield.

The research farm is an extension of the Denver Botanic Gardens.

- It has always been an agricultural production for almost 150 years.

♪ ♪ - But the farm is different now.

Each row has solar panels which pivot to follow the path of the sun.

- So these sensors pick up on how much light is coming through and help govern where it should point based on how much sunlight it's getting.

- The panels provide power to the grid, but the spotlight is on what's happening in the soil.

- When we planted the potatoes in the agrivoltaic system, they really took a long time to germinate, and we were wondering if it was too much shade.

But now these potatoes are taller, and they're flowering better than our potatoes out in the regular sun.

- Shade, it turns out, can be a big benefit for many crops.

- Maybe some of your viewers have tried to grow basil in the full sun, and they get this tiny little leaf, because the basil plant gets all the sunlight it needs off of a tiny little leaf.

But we want a larger leaf out of it.

The moment you start putting it into shade, it's going to have a larger surface area, because it's trying to collect more sunlight.

So if you think about your lettuces, arugula, kale, bok choy, celery, a lot of those plants are growing much larger within our solar array versus outside the solar array.

[sheep bleating] - Byron Kominek, in Longmont, Colorado, is one of the leading advocates for agrivoltaics.

- A lot of animals benefit from having a little bit more shade, because then they have less heat stress.

They have less need for water.

All animals, people, when it's hot out, we all want shade.

- The shade also saves water by cutting evaporation, keeping moisture in the ground, an important advantage in the water-challenged West.

[rain pattering] And when it rains, the water rolls off the tilted panels like a roof and gives plants along the edge an extra soaking.

- We're going to get some moisture runoff, and cucumbers like a lot of water.

- So when the panels from nighttime shift to the morning, they're going to dump any precipitation that was on the panel right onto the cucumber.

- Right.

- In western Colorado, near Grand Junction, Charlie Talbott is focused on how the panels will protect his peaches.

[gentle piano music] He's installing 12-foot-high panels above an acre of peach trees.

Start small.

See if it works.

- See if it works.

Yeah, this is a beta-- beta test.

- Yeah.

- The panels will produce enough power to run the packing house.

But the big benefit will be out in the orchard against his fruits' number one foe-- spring frost.

- All throughout the orchards, we have these wind machines that are made for frost protection.

- And so how will the panels help with that?

- They block enough of that-- we call it radiational cooling-- to reflect it back down onto the ground that you get that bump in temperature.

If we had that extra 5 degrees, we'd probably be virtually frost-proof.

- He also hopes the panels will help with hail.

- If we could tilt them into the direction of a hail storm, we could bounce those babies and have a high percent of them drop harmlessly to the ground.

[upbeat piano music] - Down the road-- - We have opaque solar panels.

- --at the Colorado State University Agricultural Experiment Station-- - So that's our transformer.

- --state viticulturist Horst Caspari is hoping to uncork even more benefits.

- So beautiful.

- He believes the solar panels he's about to install over his research vineyard may help make better wine.

[glasses ding] - So there will be six rows of chardonnay.

- The shade from the panels over these chardonnay vines should help slow the ripening.

- And the problem is when you ripen under really warm temperatures, the flavors may not be there.

So one of the adjustments with agrivoltaics is we are just shifting this back a little bit into ripening time that's more suitable for producing high-quality fruit.

[percussive music] - So instead of having the array follow the sun across the sky, he's going to control some of the panels manually to give the grapes full sun and full shade at different times of the day.

So this ability to pick what part of the day you want your plant to get sun could end up being key.

- It will be key.

[keycard encoder beeps] [elevator beeps] - We're not just doing agrivoltaics.

We're doing it elevated.

- On a rooftop overlooking downtown Denver, Jennifer Bousselot is discovering how agrivoltaics can make cities more resilient.

While her profession is plants-- - Right here is holy basil.

- --her passion is people.

- It's the sociological benefits of these systems that I find is the biggest driver.

- She's experimenting with raspberries, saffron, medicinal plants, and other high-value crops that can thrive in small, shady spaces and benefit from being close to the customers who buy them.

What do you hope comes from all this?

- I hope to see, especially major metropolitan areas across the globe, adopt this concept.

Why wouldn't we try to produce energy, food, and conserve water in all the same space?

[gentle music] ♪ ♪ - There are now more than 60,000 acres of agrivoltaics in the U.S.

Most are grazing sheep, which love the shade.

- The sheep do a pretty good job of vegetation management, of clearing the grasses that are out here.

- The beauty of sheep is, they'll eat the grass.

They'll leave everything else alone.

- When Brian McCurdy's company wanted to build this sprawling solar facility in western Colorado, the local government was worried about losing agricultural land.

- One of the stipulations in that permit process was that we continue to irrigate the property and we continue to graze.

♪ ♪ - When they move down from their summer pasture in the mountains, Renee and Lonnie Deal's sheep will be the new solar farm's winter residents.

The company will actually pay them to graze there.

Like all the other agrivoltaics ventures we visited, it's a first for them.

- We were a little hesitant at first.

- Why did you decide to go ahead and do it?

- So right now, the sheep industry is struggling.

And we're, to be honest, struggling.

- Running out of options.

- Yeah.

- It's an opportunity to survive.

- It is.

- And that may be the biggest benefit of all to agrivoltaics-- steady cash so more farmers can keep farming.

- The revenue that a farmer can earn from a solar array can be five to ten times more than from growing crops.

- And more of your food will be made in the shade.

[light guitar music] - Agricultural runoff not only can pollute your neighbor's farm, it can threaten clean water hundreds of miles away.

Let's meet a fourth-generation farming family in Oklahoma.

They're following nature's lead to treat crops and livestock in a more sustainable way.

[upbeat music] ♪ ♪ - Check all the bearings?

- I did.

I checked all the bearings.

I got it ready to go.

- These are group four soybeans that we're about ready to plant.

Pretty good.

They're not cracked.

- Well, we'll want to get the planter folded out?

- Yep.

You can go to work then.

- I can go to work.

That's right.

- [laughs] [engine turning over] - I think it's ready to swing.

- OK. - I'm Trey Lam, and I'm a farmer here in southern Oklahoma.

- And I'm Trey's daughter, Jean Lam.

I'm a fourth-generation agriculturalist.

- The cover crop basically keeps something on the soil living, and it also provides cover, which cover means it covers the soil.

We don't want the bare dirt showing.

- I'm really excited to be back farming here, because we are doing cover crops.

We're not doing things the way that they've always been done, and traditionally, we're doing a lot of experimentation to make the environment better not only here on our farm but for the people in our community.

- We actually realized that we need to make it into a system, a system that involves other diverse crops growing in the offseason and livestock.

[cattle lowing] [engine turning over] [twangy upbeat music] ♪ ♪ - I love cattle.

I've been around cattle my entire life.

Cows have personality.

Every cow is different.

Every cow raises a different kind of calf.

- Livestock are an important part of the whole soil health system.

By having the cattle out here, their manure being deposited here, it just recycles that and builds the soil.

- My name is Brandon Chandler.

I'm the district conservationist in Garvin County.

The Natural Resources Conservation Service is a federal agency under the Department of Ag that-- that assists landowners in finding solutions to their resource concerns.

Trey, this is what we call soil out of place.

It just gets here, you know, by the runoff.

- And you can see by the color of it that it's carrying a lot of topsoil.

Our whole adoption of cover crops and no-till farming are just so that we don't lose this topsoil, so it doesn't get in the water, so it doesn't carry it off of our farm.

And it used to run clear.

You can imagine what it cost to clean up this kind of water where you can drink it.

The water quality benefits are something that we can be proud of and something that we can tell our kids and our grandkids that it's something that we were a part of.

But really, it's what happens on this farm that's the most important for our family.

- So we're going up to a gentleman named Larry Keenan.

He's got Red Angus livestock that he's running out there.

- How are, y'all?

- Doing well.

How are you?

- Good.

- Good.

- Larry Keenan.

- I'm Shannon Phillips.

It's very nice to meet you.

- When we made the decision to fence it off, we were basically eliminating our only water source for the cattle.

- Well, it is really one of the best things that producers can do, because a healthy riparian buffer can reduce pollution to streams by up to 90%.

[percussive music] We never step on private property.

And so you've given us permission to do water quality monitoring here.

So should we start out over there?

So we're going to be doing a fish collection today.

We're looking for a lot of different types of fish, but we're also looking for the fish that are intolerant of pollution.

- This is called a seine.

- This is Greg Kloxin, and he's one of our resident experts in water sampling.

- And so what we're going to do is attempt some seine pools here and just see what we get.

OK, stop right there, Robert.

- All right.

- We've got one critter.

Operating procedures have us do a 400-meter stretch of stream.

Go ahead and probe that undercut bank and woody debris there.

Ready?

- Yep.

- I'm going to go ahead and bring it up.

I saw something.

- Oh, and a crawfish.

- We got a crawfish?

- Yeah.

- And, of course, as we collect these fish, we count them and take note of what species we have.

And then when we're finished sampling, we let the fish go.

Just get on the other side of that little submerged log right there.

These are a shiner species, fish that are very sensitive to changes in water and habitat quality.

[gentle piano music] So we've come to the end of the reach of stream that we're sampling, and we've actually encountered two species of fish, the most tolerant species and the most intolerant species.

This is the money ball right here.

- We're really happy to see these individual species here today.

What that tells us is compared to the samples that we've done in the past here that this stream is in good shape.

It hasn't degraded over time.

So landowners in this watershed are doing a great job maintaining their conservation practices.

[light guitar music] - Beavers also know a thing or two about clean water.

They're sometimes viewed as pests.

But when you observe their building skills, it's hard to picture these big rodents as anything but rock stars.

There's a national training program called BeaverCorps available to just about all their fans.

It puts a spotlight on their conservation skills and teaches us a thing or two about healthy ecosystems.

Brad Hicks takes us to Colorado.

- Nick Hagan-- - They were getting some flooding issues.

- --is a problem-solver.

- Traditionally, you would either come in here with a backhoe, or you'd come in here with dynamite.

And you'd just blow this thing up.

- But this beaver dam is now a welcome fixture in this Fort Collins, Colorado, neighborhood.

- We're moving water through this pipe to keep the pond level from rising, but we're keeping enough water in the pond so that the beaver can maintain its habitat.

- He was brought in to install the pond-leveling pipe because he's a member of the BeaverCorps.

- So BeaverCorps is a national training program to teach people the skills to coexist with beaver.

- For a long time, beaver have been seen as a problem.

They take down trees.

They dam up streams.

But people are beginning to appreciate those activities build entire ecosystems that help us.

The wetlands around their ponds filter water, provide refuge for wildlife during fires, and protect us from both floods and drought by storing water in the landscape.

- The beaver we have are like gems.

- BeaverCorps members like Alli Vitello in Gunnison, Colorado, mitigate conflicts with beaver in their community.

- It's been really wonderful to be able to meet with landowners who maybe been, honestly, shooting beaver for years, because they just didn't know there was an alternative.

- The Beaver Institute's BeaverCorps program teaches you those alternatives in a 50-hour online course you can take over a couple of months.

- We've set the course work-up to train anyone who, you know, has the passion and the interest.

- I actually started in the beaver world as a trapper.

- Now, instead of trapping beaver for fur, he's protecting them for his community.

[light guitar music] - Now we have an update on the critically endangered North Atlantic right whales.

In previous episodes, we've showed you how scientists and mariners have joined forces to protect their dwindling populations.

The U.S. Navy plays a big part in the protection of these vulnerable marine mammals.

They have to balance military readiness with environmental stewardship.

And scientists say the best way to protect marine species is to understand them.

When specifically trained lookouts spot whales, crews can alter their speed and course to avoid them.

And these details are shared with the broader scientific community.

The navy has worked with partner HDR for 15 years of marine species monitoring and research.

It's challenging tracking an animal that migrates hundreds of miles and spends so much time underwater.

Their tools include surveys with aerial, shipboard, and autonomous underwater vehicles, passive acoustic monitoring, tagging, and photo identification.

With estimates of just 370 individuals and 70 breeding females, every whale is in need of protection.

Thanks for joining us.

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

- And you can always watch our show on PBS Passport.