0:00:05 > 0:00:08Every year, nearly three million people
0:00:08 > 0:00:10visit Yellowstone National Park.
0:00:10 > 0:00:15For many Americans, Yellowstone has become the iconic landscape -
0:00:15 > 0:00:17wilderness landscape.
0:00:18 > 0:00:20It contains the beauty of the mountains,
0:00:20 > 0:00:24it contains the wonders of the geysers
0:00:24 > 0:00:27and one only has to look at a herd of buffalo,
0:00:27 > 0:00:29roaming and drinking from the stream
0:00:29 > 0:00:33to feel absolutely in touch with what it means to be American.
0:00:33 > 0:00:37They go to wilderness for an escape from modern life,
0:00:37 > 0:00:39into a vast, uninhabited landscape.
0:00:41 > 0:00:45A world of nature untainted by the hand of man.
0:00:49 > 0:00:52But places like Yellowstone are not as natural as they look.
0:00:52 > 0:00:54They're a modern invention.
0:00:54 > 0:00:58The American wilderness was not saved - it was created.
0:00:58 > 0:01:02It began as someone's home
0:01:02 > 0:01:06and to make it a wilderness, they had to be expelled.
0:01:06 > 0:01:09They had to lose that land, they had to be dispossessed.
0:01:09 > 0:01:12The unnatural history of Yellowstone
0:01:12 > 0:01:17is the story of the creation of wilderness in America.
0:01:19 > 0:01:22It's a tale of railroad barons and Indian wars.
0:01:24 > 0:01:29A battle to save one species and to destroy another.
0:01:31 > 0:01:35But it is also the story of a powerful and controversial idea
0:01:35 > 0:01:38that shaped America
0:01:38 > 0:01:42and underpins the way that most of us think about nature today.
0:01:42 > 0:01:45If I had one term to ban from the English language,
0:01:45 > 0:01:46it'd be "wilderness".
0:01:46 > 0:01:48I think it's the most despicable...
0:01:48 > 0:01:51denigrating, racist term in the English language.
0:02:01 > 0:02:05Today, places we describe as "wilderness" or "wild"
0:02:05 > 0:02:09are highly valued in our culture but this wasn't always the case,
0:02:09 > 0:02:11even in America.
0:02:12 > 0:02:14When the earliest English colonists arrive
0:02:14 > 0:02:17on the Eastern Seaboard of North America,
0:02:17 > 0:02:20they bring certain religious assumptions with them
0:02:20 > 0:02:26that lead them to think of the wild as a satanic, dangerous place,
0:02:26 > 0:02:30a place where you'll lose your soul, a place populated by demons.
0:02:30 > 0:02:32WOLF HOWLS
0:02:32 > 0:02:35There's very little affection for that landscape.
0:02:35 > 0:02:38Little sense of being drawn to the wilderness as an attractive place.
0:02:38 > 0:02:39It's a scary place.
0:02:41 > 0:02:46Landscapes we call wilderness were, to these deeply religious people, "the waste".
0:02:51 > 0:02:54As men and women struggling to make a living from the land,
0:02:54 > 0:02:59it was the pastoral, cultivated landscape they found beautiful and godly.
0:02:59 > 0:03:03They see that their role in this is literally as an agent of God.
0:03:03 > 0:03:07He created the rough draft and he put them on earth to finish it
0:03:07 > 0:03:09and so finishing becomes their metaphor.
0:03:09 > 0:03:12They move in, they're going to finish the whole continent,
0:03:12 > 0:03:16make it as if a garden and the wilderness will disappear.
0:03:21 > 0:03:23This old, negative perception of wilderness
0:03:23 > 0:03:28and of wild, uncultivated lands began to change,
0:03:28 > 0:03:30not in America, but in Europe.
0:03:32 > 0:03:37Over the course of the 18th Century, wild places once avoided
0:03:37 > 0:03:40because they were seen as ugly and satanic
0:03:40 > 0:03:44became sought out by poets, philosophers and artists
0:03:44 > 0:03:47looking for a very special, powerful experience.
0:03:47 > 0:03:49The sublime.
0:03:50 > 0:03:54To understand why we now think about wilderness the way we do,
0:03:54 > 0:03:57you first have to come to grips with...
0:03:57 > 0:04:00a word I think we kind of take for granted today,
0:04:00 > 0:04:02which is the word "sublime".
0:04:03 > 0:04:07In the 18th Century, that word came to mean
0:04:07 > 0:04:11"places in nature where God was most eminent in the world".
0:04:11 > 0:04:15You would go experience the sublime in those places.
0:04:15 > 0:04:18To stand... face to face with your God.
0:04:21 > 0:04:24What the sublime represented
0:04:24 > 0:04:28is sort of the extreme sport of the 18th Century in Europe.
0:04:28 > 0:04:32It was to stare at a waterfall or to stare into a chasm,
0:04:32 > 0:04:35or to look up at a magnificent mountain.
0:04:35 > 0:04:39What the viewer is doing is, is sort of experiencing sheer terror
0:04:39 > 0:04:43and revelling in the experience.
0:04:43 > 0:04:48Sort of ravishing in being able to encounter the awful power of God.
0:04:51 > 0:04:54The sublime became a key feature of Romanticism.
0:04:56 > 0:05:02Artists such as Turner and poets such as Byron
0:05:02 > 0:05:05were exploring these depths of feeling and emotion
0:05:05 > 0:05:08through the concept of the sublime.
0:05:08 > 0:05:13And Turner would go to the Alps and paint the Alps.
0:05:13 > 0:05:17Turner would supposedly tie himself to a ship's mast
0:05:17 > 0:05:20and experience a sea storm.
0:05:22 > 0:05:24WAVES CRASH
0:05:25 > 0:05:28One of the things you'll see in the European sublime
0:05:28 > 0:05:32is it has to be a landscape which appears to be devoid of humans.
0:05:32 > 0:05:35The Alps become the favourite sublime landscape.
0:05:35 > 0:05:38As you go up high enough, above the villages,
0:05:38 > 0:05:41there, finally, you're confronting a world without humans.
0:05:41 > 0:05:43The Arctic.
0:05:46 > 0:05:47The ocean.
0:05:47 > 0:05:50All the places where, in fact, you confront nature
0:05:50 > 0:05:53unmodified and unrestrained by human beings.
0:05:57 > 0:06:00This aspect of the sublime would slowly transform
0:06:00 > 0:06:03elite, American visions of wilderness,
0:06:03 > 0:06:05when Romanticism crossed the Atlantic
0:06:05 > 0:06:08at the beginning of the 19th Century,
0:06:08 > 0:06:10just as the United States was emerging
0:06:10 > 0:06:13as a new, independent nation.
0:06:24 > 0:06:29One of the greatest achievements of Romanticism in the 19th Century
0:06:29 > 0:06:32was to invent the modern nation as we know it.
0:06:32 > 0:06:35A nation that looked, not to the divine rights of kings,
0:06:35 > 0:06:37not to the crown for its authority,
0:06:37 > 0:06:40but looked instead to the people
0:06:40 > 0:06:44and the land that had made those people who they were.
0:06:44 > 0:06:46So in America, the myth of wilderness
0:06:46 > 0:06:51is also one of the founding myths of American nationalism.
0:06:54 > 0:06:57The wilderness is the place out of which America came.
0:06:57 > 0:06:59It was where the pioneers went
0:06:59 > 0:07:03and the struggle to make a nation out of the wilderness, the frontier,
0:07:03 > 0:07:07is central to America as a nation, as a people.
0:07:09 > 0:07:15The first American notions of a sublime or a Romantic sublime
0:07:15 > 0:07:19are located in what is called the Hudson River Valley
0:07:19 > 0:07:20in upstate New York,
0:07:20 > 0:07:23where painters could go out into nature
0:07:23 > 0:07:26and experience the full majesty,
0:07:26 > 0:07:30the spectacular nature of American landscape.
0:07:32 > 0:07:38But as the United States expanded westward, the focus shifted.
0:07:38 > 0:07:40By the decades following the Civil War,
0:07:40 > 0:07:44the great centre of the Romantic sublime for Americans
0:07:44 > 0:07:45is the far west.
0:07:45 > 0:07:47It's places like Yellowstone.
0:07:50 > 0:07:53Before long, this Romantic idea of wilderness,
0:07:53 > 0:07:57as uninhabited places with sublime scenery,
0:07:57 > 0:08:01would collide with the real landscapes and inhabitants of the West.
0:08:01 > 0:08:05People for whom the very idea of wilderness was meaningless.
0:08:07 > 0:08:11Only to the white man was nature a "wilderness".
0:08:11 > 0:08:13To us it was tame.
0:08:13 > 0:08:15Earth was bountiful
0:08:15 > 0:08:19and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery.
0:08:19 > 0:08:22Not until the hairy man from the east came
0:08:22 > 0:08:26and with brutal frenzy heaped injustices upon us
0:08:26 > 0:08:29was it "wild" for us.
0:08:29 > 0:08:32When Europeans come into the western part of North America,
0:08:32 > 0:08:34what they see are grasslands on a scale
0:08:34 > 0:08:36which many of them had never encountered before.
0:08:36 > 0:08:41They see mountains covered with forests.
0:08:41 > 0:08:43What they see is deserts
0:08:43 > 0:08:46which stretch longer than they could ever imagine.
0:08:46 > 0:08:48I mean, they see this monumental landscape.
0:08:52 > 0:08:54And for them this, of course,
0:08:54 > 0:08:57must be the way it was without human beings having touched it,
0:08:57 > 0:09:00but if you begin to look closely, virtually everything you see
0:09:00 > 0:09:02had been manipulated by Indian peoples over time.
0:09:04 > 0:09:09American Indians had been shaping the ecosystems of the West
0:09:09 > 0:09:11for over 12,000 years.
0:09:12 > 0:09:15They limited the numbers of large mammals through their hunting.
0:09:17 > 0:09:20They encouraged the growth of food-producing plants
0:09:20 > 0:09:23through selective gathering
0:09:23 > 0:09:27and shaped the undergrowth and size of forests
0:09:27 > 0:09:29through their use of fire.
0:09:33 > 0:09:36But Europeans were blind to all this.
0:09:36 > 0:09:39It was not a barren land, it was not an empty land,
0:09:39 > 0:09:42it was not a wilderness by the European standards.
0:09:42 > 0:09:44Nothing out in the west was a wilderness
0:09:44 > 0:09:46until the Europeans made it a wilderness.
0:09:49 > 0:09:53By the mid-19th Century, the tribes living in and using the area
0:09:53 > 0:09:56that would become Yellowstone National Park
0:09:56 > 0:10:00included the Crow, the Shoshone Sheepeaters and the Blackfeet.
0:10:05 > 0:10:09The Crow lived a life that straddled the plains,
0:10:09 > 0:10:11where they hunted bison,
0:10:11 > 0:10:14and the mountains, where they gathered wild foods.
0:10:18 > 0:10:22The end of the summer season was a good time for harvesting berries.
0:10:22 > 0:10:27During the spring and the summer months,
0:10:27 > 0:10:31Yellowstone was very popular,
0:10:31 > 0:10:34because they were able to go up into the mountains
0:10:34 > 0:10:38without having deal with 20-foot snow drifts
0:10:38 > 0:10:41and to harvest animals
0:10:41 > 0:10:44such as the mountain goat and the bighorn sheep.
0:10:44 > 0:10:45And they would take the hide,
0:10:45 > 0:10:50because they were thinner and they would use it for summer wear.
0:10:52 > 0:10:56Then, into the fall, the animals were at their heaviest weight,
0:10:56 > 0:11:00and that was a very good time for them to go into the mountains,
0:11:00 > 0:11:05including the Yellowstone, to harvest the elk and deer and moose,
0:11:05 > 0:11:09many of the great meats my ancestors ate.
0:11:09 > 0:11:11DEER CALLS
0:11:13 > 0:11:15The Shoshone Sheepeaters lived year-round in the area
0:11:15 > 0:11:18that became Yellowstone National Park.
0:11:19 > 0:11:23They followed the migrations of vast herds of wild bighorn sheep,
0:11:23 > 0:11:27the species that archaeologists believe once dominated Yellowstone,
0:11:27 > 0:11:30and upon which the Sheepeaters relied.
0:11:31 > 0:11:34A fur-trapper called Osborne Russell
0:11:34 > 0:11:36provided one of the first descriptions
0:11:36 > 0:11:41of this little-known Yellowstone tribe in the 1830s.
0:11:41 > 0:11:45They were all neatly clothed in dressed deer and sheep-skins
0:11:45 > 0:11:46of the best quality,
0:11:46 > 0:11:50and seemed to be perfectly contented and happy.
0:11:50 > 0:11:55Osborne Russell's journal describes them as having these big dogs,
0:11:55 > 0:11:58and having beautiful horn bows made out of sheep horns,
0:11:58 > 0:12:02where they were able to soak the horns off the sheep
0:12:02 > 0:12:04in the geysers,
0:12:04 > 0:12:07and then cut them and turn them into bows which were, you know,
0:12:07 > 0:12:11three-and-a-half feet long and get the power of 60, 75 pound pull.
0:12:11 > 0:12:13I mean, incredibly strong.
0:12:15 > 0:12:18The relationships of these tribes to wildlife
0:12:18 > 0:12:22and the dramatic landscape went far deeper than subsistence.
0:12:22 > 0:12:25They were the basis of their religious life.
0:12:25 > 0:12:30They also, of course, spiritually connected to the geysers,
0:12:30 > 0:12:33and we have, you know, some of the most powerful Sheepeaters,
0:12:33 > 0:12:35the ones that had the most powerful medicine,
0:12:35 > 0:12:38had what's called the water ghost medicine.
0:12:42 > 0:12:47The hot water was made hot by ghosts that lived in the water,
0:12:47 > 0:12:51and so if you could get the power of those ghosts,
0:12:51 > 0:12:54then you could become a very powerful person.
0:12:57 > 0:13:02Native American medicine, for some people, it's power,
0:13:02 > 0:13:07it's knowledge, it's the ability to cure an ailment.
0:13:07 > 0:13:12It's the ability that someone's mind isn't right
0:13:12 > 0:13:14and the ability to help them,
0:13:14 > 0:13:18you know, find themselves or to help them get better.
0:13:18 > 0:13:20To heal, you know, their soul.
0:13:24 > 0:13:28The Crow people believe in energy that comes from nature,
0:13:28 > 0:13:31and people could sense it and see it.
0:13:31 > 0:13:36And the Crows learnt to use this energy,
0:13:36 > 0:13:38they didn't tame it, they didn't harness it,
0:13:38 > 0:13:40they just became a part of it.
0:13:42 > 0:13:47People would go and fast so they could use some of this energy.
0:13:49 > 0:13:51And even the other tribes around here
0:13:51 > 0:13:54believed that we were different from them
0:13:54 > 0:13:57because of this energy that we used.
0:14:01 > 0:14:04Moving freely across their extensive lands,
0:14:04 > 0:14:09following the wild plants and animal resources that each season offered,
0:14:09 > 0:14:12the hunter-gatherer Indians of Yellowstone
0:14:12 > 0:14:16were able to sustain themselves prior to white settlement.
0:14:18 > 0:14:21But by the late 1860s, a new threat was approaching,
0:14:21 > 0:14:24over the horizon to the East.
0:14:24 > 0:14:27One that would result in the loss of their homelands
0:14:27 > 0:14:30and lead to the creation of the first National Parks.
0:14:32 > 0:14:34WHISTLE BLOWS
0:14:35 > 0:14:39For 19th-century Americans, the railroads were a magic wand.
0:14:39 > 0:14:43You build a railroad and the landscape through which they pass
0:14:43 > 0:14:47is utterly transformed, almost instantly transformed,
0:14:47 > 0:14:49and the narrative they set in motion
0:14:49 > 0:14:52is the standard, predictable frontier narrative,
0:14:52 > 0:14:55beautifully captured in that painting of John Gast's.
0:14:59 > 0:15:02You see Lady Liberty, standing for progress,
0:15:02 > 0:15:06hovering over a landscape with the railroad passing beneath her,
0:15:06 > 0:15:10and as the railroad moves west, the wild retreats,
0:15:10 > 0:15:13native peoples retreat, the bison herds retreat,
0:15:13 > 0:15:16and behind them come all the symbols of progress,
0:15:16 > 0:15:20the surveyor, the person laying out the boundaries of farms,
0:15:20 > 0:15:23the farms, the edge of the cities and behind them the factories
0:15:23 > 0:15:25and the great metropolises
0:15:25 > 0:15:28that drive this narrative of American progress.
0:15:33 > 0:15:37Railroad building had been incentivised during the Civil War,
0:15:37 > 0:15:40when the US government gave away Indian territory
0:15:40 > 0:15:44to railroad companies in the form of land grants.
0:15:46 > 0:15:49In my view, it was environmentally disastrous,
0:15:49 > 0:15:51economically disastrous and socially disastrous.
0:15:51 > 0:15:55You begin building railroads often to a place where, in fact,
0:15:55 > 0:15:57there's very little need of them, there's no need of them.
0:15:57 > 0:16:03One man deeply implicated in this process was the financier Jay Cooke,
0:16:03 > 0:16:08who was heavily invested in the Northern Pacific Railroad.
0:16:08 > 0:16:09His railroad was planning a route
0:16:09 > 0:16:12across the northern plains and Rockies
0:16:12 > 0:16:15that would pass just north of Yellowstone.
0:16:17 > 0:16:21One of things that occurs to Jay Cooke is the idea
0:16:21 > 0:16:24that what we need is destination points in the West,
0:16:24 > 0:16:27what we need is an equivalent of European sublimes.
0:16:27 > 0:16:29He finds out about Yellowstone,
0:16:29 > 0:16:32and Jay Cooke sees Yellowstone
0:16:32 > 0:16:35as a destination point on the Northern Pacific.
0:16:39 > 0:16:43The problem for Jay Cooke was that, in 1870,
0:16:43 > 0:16:46very few people knew about Yellowstone.
0:16:46 > 0:16:49But a government scientist called Dr Ferdinand Hayden
0:16:49 > 0:16:50would change all that.
0:16:52 > 0:16:57He was a geologist with what became the US Geological Survey,
0:16:57 > 0:17:01and resolved to put together an expedition to Yellowstone,
0:17:01 > 0:17:04next summer, the summer of 1871.
0:17:06 > 0:17:09Recognising the potential for publicity
0:17:09 > 0:17:11around Hayden's expedition,
0:17:11 > 0:17:13Cooke approached him and provided funds
0:17:13 > 0:17:17for a photographer and an artist to go along.
0:17:17 > 0:17:20So he took lots of scientists,
0:17:20 > 0:17:24and, of course, all the usual packers and cooks and helpers.
0:17:24 > 0:17:29Some guests, who were sons of influential people.
0:17:30 > 0:17:35This team travelled around, surveying and mapping the region.
0:17:35 > 0:17:38They were mostly educated men from the East Coast,
0:17:38 > 0:17:41steeped in the romantic traditions which they brought with them
0:17:41 > 0:17:45to an unfamiliar Western landscape.
0:17:47 > 0:17:49By time people go west,
0:17:49 > 0:17:51they know what they're supposed to see,
0:17:51 > 0:17:54they've been educated in romanticism and the sublime
0:17:54 > 0:17:57and so what they present is a spectacularly sublime
0:17:57 > 0:17:59and Romantic West.'
0:18:01 > 0:18:04This was especially true of the images created by Thomas Moran,
0:18:04 > 0:18:06the expedition's artist.
0:18:09 > 0:18:13In Moran's painting of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,
0:18:13 > 0:18:16there's two little figures right in the middle of the painting,
0:18:16 > 0:18:18and they're absolutely enveloped
0:18:18 > 0:18:22by this extraordinarily vast, broad scene
0:18:22 > 0:18:25of this brilliant blue waterfall,
0:18:25 > 0:18:27mist coming up from the waterfall,
0:18:27 > 0:18:34and the river cutting through this wide, multi-hued canyon.
0:18:34 > 0:18:37You put yourself into the perspective of these tiny figures
0:18:37 > 0:18:41and then you begin to realise how overwhelming
0:18:41 > 0:18:44and extraordinary the landscape is.
0:18:45 > 0:18:50We're standing at the edge of the great canyon of Yellowstone.
0:18:50 > 0:18:54He's got a descending foreground,
0:18:54 > 0:19:00and he's got huge side diagonals which pretty much force you
0:19:00 > 0:19:02into the painting,
0:19:02 > 0:19:05and so there's very little to stop you from falling.
0:19:05 > 0:19:10So that process actually creates the sublime experience.
0:19:20 > 0:19:22After the expedition,
0:19:22 > 0:19:26Hayden began compiling his scientific report on Yellowstone.
0:19:26 > 0:19:29He gets a note from Jay Cooke suggesting to him
0:19:29 > 0:19:31that he enter into the report
0:19:31 > 0:19:34a recommendation that Congress turn Yellowstone
0:19:34 > 0:19:37into a National Park, or a national pleasure ground.
0:19:37 > 0:19:41So Hayden's report then becomes part of the scientific evidence
0:19:41 > 0:19:45for why we need a National Park at Yellowstone.
0:19:45 > 0:19:50And so began the political lobbying for America's first National Park,
0:19:50 > 0:19:52a campaign fronted by Hayden
0:19:52 > 0:19:58but financed largely by Jay Cooke and the Northern Pacific Railroad.
0:19:58 > 0:20:04The campaign was not necessarily a high-minded campaign,
0:20:04 > 0:20:09in the sense that not everyone's motives...
0:20:09 > 0:20:13were to advance culture,
0:20:13 > 0:20:15or to protect American nature.
0:20:16 > 0:20:19Jay Cooke desperately wanted a park there
0:20:19 > 0:20:23to get tourists on this railway he was trying to build.
0:20:23 > 0:20:27Persuading Congress to set land aside for a park
0:20:27 > 0:20:30at a time of unprecedented claims by homesteaders,
0:20:30 > 0:20:35miners and lumber companies would require some serious justification.
0:20:35 > 0:20:39Hayden's report stressed that Yellowstone's high elevation
0:20:39 > 0:20:43and harsh climate made it unsuitable for farming.
0:20:43 > 0:20:47It also highlighted the scientific importance of the region.
0:20:49 > 0:20:54Hayden knew that there weren't very many geysers on earth,
0:20:54 > 0:20:57but Yellowstone had the lion's share,
0:20:57 > 0:21:00two thirds, at least, of all the world's geysers,
0:21:00 > 0:21:02and Yellowstone had the big ones, you know,
0:21:02 > 0:21:05the ones that erupted taller than 100 feet.
0:21:17 > 0:21:20Big stuff in geology.
0:21:22 > 0:21:25So he drew the boundaries of Yellowstone specifically
0:21:25 > 0:21:29to try and encompass all the geysers.
0:21:32 > 0:21:35Those lobbying to make Yellowstone a National Park
0:21:35 > 0:21:39also appealed to Americans' growing sense of national pride
0:21:39 > 0:21:42in their natural heritage.
0:21:42 > 0:21:47One historian has talked about what he calls monumentalism,
0:21:47 > 0:21:53which is the idea that America had something that was unique,
0:21:53 > 0:22:00one of a kind when compared to the old-world culture of Europe.
0:22:00 > 0:22:04Europe might have cathedrals and Europe might have a long history,
0:22:04 > 0:22:06but the United States has Yellowstone.
0:22:06 > 0:22:08The United States has mountains.
0:22:08 > 0:22:10The United States has a sublime scenery
0:22:10 > 0:22:13that's better than anything you can find in Europe,
0:22:13 > 0:22:15and the usual comparison is to the Alps,
0:22:15 > 0:22:17that these are just far better than the Alps.
0:22:17 > 0:22:21So what they begin to do is give this sense of American nationhood
0:22:21 > 0:22:26as not needing the European past, it'll take on these natural roots
0:22:26 > 0:22:29which Yellowstone itself becomes a foundation of.
0:22:35 > 0:22:39To ensure Congress understood the monumental nature of Yellowstone,
0:22:39 > 0:22:44Hayden held an exhibition of images produced by his expedition -
0:22:44 > 0:22:46Moran's colour sketches,
0:22:46 > 0:22:50and the landscape photographs of William Henry Jackson.
0:22:50 > 0:22:55And that illustrated to the members of congress that Yellowstone
0:22:55 > 0:22:59was a place of curiosities and grand wonders
0:22:59 > 0:23:01that was deserving of preservation.
0:23:03 > 0:23:06The Act creating Yellowstone National Park
0:23:06 > 0:23:10was signed into law by President Ulysses S Grant
0:23:10 > 0:23:11on March 1st, 1872.
0:23:11 > 0:23:16And its wording became a blueprint for subsequent National Parks.
0:23:18 > 0:23:21And it said that the tract of land
0:23:21 > 0:23:24lying near the headwaters of the Yellowstone River
0:23:24 > 0:23:29would be forever free from settlement, occupancy, or sale,
0:23:29 > 0:23:34and set apart and dedicated as a public park or pleasuring ground
0:23:34 > 0:23:38for the benefit and enjoyment of the people.
0:23:38 > 0:23:44And declared that they must be retained in their natural condition.
0:23:53 > 0:23:56But retaining them in their natural condition
0:23:56 > 0:24:00was not a charter for nature preservation by modern standards.
0:24:00 > 0:24:03Hunting, fishing, and the cutting of timber
0:24:03 > 0:24:06would all be allowed in the new park.
0:24:06 > 0:24:10They were concentrated almost entirely on those
0:24:10 > 0:24:14marvellous geological and geothermal wonders.
0:24:17 > 0:24:21They didn't give a thought, really,
0:24:21 > 0:24:25to so many things that we value the place for now,
0:24:25 > 0:24:28like wildness,
0:24:28 > 0:24:32like its fantastic array of wildlife.
0:24:32 > 0:24:36And there was another, more ominous oversight.
0:24:36 > 0:24:42In the Act, there was no reference to Indians living in Yellowstone.
0:24:42 > 0:24:45But in 1871,
0:24:45 > 0:24:52Dr Hayden specifically asked members of the Shoshone tribe to leave
0:24:52 > 0:24:54and go to reservations,
0:24:54 > 0:24:58and some of the tribal members did leave the park at that time,
0:24:58 > 0:25:00and others did not.
0:25:03 > 0:25:09The very moment that the United States begins to set aside
0:25:09 > 0:25:14romantic places like Yellowstone or Yosemite
0:25:14 > 0:25:16as icons of American nationalism
0:25:16 > 0:25:20is the very same moment that the United States is...
0:25:20 > 0:25:23segregating Native peoples on reservations,
0:25:23 > 0:25:27moving people off of their native lands and onto reservations.
0:25:27 > 0:25:29WOLVES HOWL
0:25:31 > 0:25:34America had its first National Park
0:25:34 > 0:25:37but for the main lobbying force behind it,
0:25:37 > 0:25:40Jay Cooke and the Northern Pacific Railroad,
0:25:40 > 0:25:42the sense of triumph was short-lived.
0:25:44 > 0:25:48In 1873, his finance company collapsed,
0:25:48 > 0:25:51triggering a nationwide financial panic.
0:25:51 > 0:25:55The United States plunged into years of economic depression
0:25:55 > 0:26:00and construction of the railroad to Yellowstone ground to a halt.
0:26:03 > 0:26:06In the 1870s, Yellowstone was a wilderness
0:26:06 > 0:26:09that was only lines on a map.
0:26:11 > 0:26:15It had no superintendent, no employees,
0:26:15 > 0:26:21no police force, and no way to reach it effectively.
0:26:26 > 0:26:30This meant that fewer than 500 white tourists
0:26:30 > 0:26:32made it to the new park each year.
0:26:34 > 0:26:35And, with no-one to stop them,
0:26:35 > 0:26:41local Indians quietly continued to use Yellowstone in traditional ways.
0:26:44 > 0:26:49But the presence of any Indians in America's first National Park
0:26:49 > 0:26:51would be short-lived.
0:26:51 > 0:26:53GUNSHOTS
0:26:56 > 0:27:001877 is a pivotal year both in terms of indigenous people
0:27:00 > 0:27:03and the National Park idea.
0:27:03 > 0:27:05You have Yellowstone National Park,
0:27:05 > 0:27:07that's been around now for about five years or so,
0:27:07 > 0:27:10and you have tourists visiting the park.
0:27:10 > 0:27:13They have expectations not that different from modern tourists.
0:27:13 > 0:27:17They're going to explore, see the wonders, write home about them,
0:27:17 > 0:27:19and they're going to have a grand time.
0:27:19 > 0:27:24Meanwhile, the Nez Perces are fleeing the troops of General Miles.
0:27:30 > 0:27:33The Nez Perces were an Indian tribe that lived hundreds of miles
0:27:33 > 0:27:35to the west of the park,
0:27:35 > 0:27:38and did not consider Yellowstone part of their territory.
0:27:42 > 0:27:46When the US Army attempted to confine them to a reservation,
0:27:46 > 0:27:49the Nez Perces tried to escape to Canada...
0:27:53 > 0:27:59..and by August 1877, had reached Yellowstone National Park.
0:28:02 > 0:28:06By this time, the Nez Perces had been betrayed, they'd been bloodied,
0:28:06 > 0:28:09the young men are angry, they have lost wives,
0:28:09 > 0:28:12children, sisters, and there's part, particularly of the young men,
0:28:12 > 0:28:15who want to kill any white person that they meet.
0:28:15 > 0:28:16GUNSHOTS
0:28:19 > 0:28:23So when the Nez Perces encountered white tourists near the geysers,
0:28:23 > 0:28:26an altercation ensued.
0:28:26 > 0:28:27GUNSHOTS
0:28:27 > 0:28:30The tourists were briefly held captive
0:28:30 > 0:28:34and one white man was shot and left for dead.
0:28:34 > 0:28:37One group of pursuing Nez Perces went north
0:28:37 > 0:28:43to confront another tourist party, that was camped on Otter Creek,
0:28:43 > 0:28:46and there they had a little skirmish.
0:28:46 > 0:28:51They shot Charles Keane and killed him, wounded Andrew Weikert,
0:28:51 > 0:28:54and scared the Dickens out of the other people.
0:28:56 > 0:28:59The Nez Perces hurried north, out of the park,
0:28:59 > 0:29:04but were captured by the army just short of the Canadian border.
0:29:04 > 0:29:07So that was the end of the Nez Perces campaign,
0:29:07 > 0:29:10but the local press out here in the West just went ballistic,
0:29:10 > 0:29:14as far as these savages killing these tourists in Yellowstone.
0:29:14 > 0:29:17The bad press was deeply troubling
0:29:17 > 0:29:20to the superintendent of Yellowstone National Park,
0:29:20 > 0:29:23Philetus Norris.
0:29:23 > 0:29:25Under-funded and under-staffed,
0:29:25 > 0:29:29Norris now worried that tourists would stay away from Yellowstone.
0:29:29 > 0:29:32His fears deepened over the next two summers
0:29:32 > 0:29:35as local Indian tribes also clashed with the US Army
0:29:35 > 0:29:37in the vicinity of the park.
0:29:39 > 0:29:42And by 1879, if anyone has a sense of Yellowstone it's,
0:29:42 > 0:29:44"Oh, it's where we have Indian wars every year,
0:29:44 > 0:29:47"it's not a place for tourists."
0:29:48 > 0:29:51And so the management of the park becomes...
0:29:51 > 0:29:54dedicated to protecting tourists
0:29:54 > 0:29:56and eliminating Indians from the park boundaries.
0:29:59 > 0:30:03Norris organised for the removal of those Shoshone Sheepeaters
0:30:03 > 0:30:06who lingered in the park.
0:30:06 > 0:30:10There is evidence that at some point they did get all of the Sheepeaters
0:30:10 > 0:30:13kind of in one location and then get them onto a reservation.
0:30:15 > 0:30:20Norris also tackled the other tribes who used the park seasonally,
0:30:20 > 0:30:23travelling at his own expense to neighbouring reservations
0:30:23 > 0:30:26to tell Indians to stay out of the park.
0:30:28 > 0:30:34What happened when the Indian people all around, including my ancestors,
0:30:34 > 0:30:37when they were outlawed from going to Yellowstone,
0:30:37 > 0:30:40it took away a great food source.
0:30:40 > 0:30:43And one of the sustaining...
0:30:43 > 0:30:47factors of human life
0:30:47 > 0:30:50is to have a spiritual connection to our god,
0:30:50 > 0:30:54and the Yellowstone area, as it is known now,
0:30:54 > 0:30:59is a place where a lot of that strong connection was found.
0:31:03 > 0:31:07Early park officials even re-wrote history
0:31:07 > 0:31:09in an effort to allay the concerns of tourists.
0:31:09 > 0:31:12They spread a myth that Yellowstone's Indians
0:31:12 > 0:31:15had traditionally feared the geysers
0:31:15 > 0:31:19and avoided the very wonders that tourists wanted to see.
0:31:23 > 0:31:25They were not afraid of the geyser itself,
0:31:25 > 0:31:29they didn't want to abuse the energy that was coming
0:31:29 > 0:31:32from those geysers and those steams in those areas,
0:31:32 > 0:31:34those hot areas, they didn't want to abuse it.
0:31:34 > 0:31:36It's part of their lives,
0:31:36 > 0:31:40and this is how we survived for a long time.
0:31:41 > 0:31:44The enduring and pernicious aspect of the myth
0:31:44 > 0:31:46that Indians were afraid of the geysers
0:31:46 > 0:31:49and stayed away from Yellowstone
0:31:49 > 0:31:54is that it effectively erased the long indigenous history in the park.
0:31:54 > 0:31:58This helped to cement the notion that wilderness was,
0:31:58 > 0:32:00and should be, an uninhabited space.
0:32:04 > 0:32:09I think this romantic idea of the wild as an un-peopled place
0:32:09 > 0:32:10was so powerful,
0:32:10 > 0:32:14that whether or not Indian wars were taking place,
0:32:14 > 0:32:16whether or not National Parks
0:32:16 > 0:32:19and Indian Reservations were being created at the same time,
0:32:19 > 0:32:23there still would have been powerful cultural impulses to say
0:32:23 > 0:32:26Indians don't belong in these National Parks,
0:32:26 > 0:32:27let's have them be somewhere else.
0:32:36 > 0:32:39The removal of Indians from Yellowstone
0:32:39 > 0:32:42created America's first uninhabited wilderness.
0:32:44 > 0:32:46It also set a precedent for the separation
0:32:46 > 0:32:49of native peoples from wild lands
0:32:49 > 0:32:53in the designation of subsequent National Parks.
0:32:54 > 0:32:59And it entrenched the idea of wilderness as a tourist destination.
0:33:03 > 0:33:05After years of economic recession,
0:33:05 > 0:33:09construction of the railroad to Yellowstone finally resumed.
0:33:11 > 0:33:17The Northern Pacific Railroad came to Yellowstone in 1883,
0:33:17 > 0:33:19and that was the shot in the arm
0:33:19 > 0:33:23that really kicked Yellowstone into gear for tourism.
0:33:23 > 0:33:29Suddenly, Yellowstone had 5,000 visitors instead of 500.
0:33:34 > 0:33:37Ladies stepped off the train
0:33:37 > 0:33:41dressed up in their finery with parasols and tall boots,
0:33:41 > 0:33:44and gentlemen were wearing ties and coats.
0:33:44 > 0:33:50Everybody was wearing their best finery to the wilderness.
0:34:00 > 0:34:04But you had to have money. You know, it cost 120
0:34:04 > 0:34:09to ride across from New York to the West.
0:34:09 > 0:34:12That was a lot of money in 1883 and that didn't include
0:34:12 > 0:34:16your five-and-a-quarter day trip around Yellowstone,
0:34:16 > 0:34:19which was an additional 50 or so.
0:34:20 > 0:34:23By that time, you had the rise of the capitalist class,
0:34:23 > 0:34:26you had the industrial revolution happen in the US,
0:34:26 > 0:34:29so you had people with a lot of money and free time on their hands,
0:34:29 > 0:34:32and so they were looking for an escape.
0:34:32 > 0:34:35These tourists were not quite ready for a full-on encounter
0:34:35 > 0:34:37with the Romantic sublime.
0:34:37 > 0:34:41The experience of wrestling a living from the land
0:34:41 > 0:34:45was still too recent in the memories of most Americans for that.
0:34:45 > 0:34:46Their idea of wilderness
0:34:46 > 0:34:48was to stay in this fancy...
0:34:48 > 0:34:51what we would call a five star, six star hotel today,
0:34:51 > 0:34:54like the Old Faithful Lodge or other kinds of stuff,
0:34:54 > 0:34:57and to take the stagecoach tour through the thermal areas,
0:34:57 > 0:34:59that was their idea of wilderness.
0:35:01 > 0:35:06Yellowstone was fast becoming the iconic American wilderness destination it is today.
0:35:08 > 0:35:11But there was one key element still missing.
0:35:11 > 0:35:12Wildlife.
0:35:14 > 0:35:18By 1883, when the first tourists
0:35:18 > 0:35:21stepped off the train in great numbers,
0:35:21 > 0:35:24hardly an animal was to be seen.
0:35:26 > 0:35:32This was the legacy of unregulated hunting in Yellowstone National Park
0:35:32 > 0:35:34in the first decade of its history.
0:35:34 > 0:35:37Everybody that was here was armed
0:35:37 > 0:35:41and they mostly shot at everything that moved.
0:35:44 > 0:35:48In the American West in the late 1800s, there was this infamous,
0:35:48 > 0:35:51really, slaughter of large mammals.
0:35:51 > 0:35:53The part of it that we've all heard about
0:35:53 > 0:35:55was what happened to the bison.
0:35:55 > 0:36:00Millions of them were killed and mostly for their hides.
0:36:02 > 0:36:05Any place where there were concentrations of large mammals,
0:36:05 > 0:36:07somebody would show up
0:36:07 > 0:36:09and take advantage of that opportunity, it was the market.
0:36:09 > 0:36:11GUNSHOTS
0:36:11 > 0:36:15Frontiersmen saw this as part of the "civilising"
0:36:15 > 0:36:19of the Western wilderness, but far away on the East Coast,
0:36:19 > 0:36:22an elite minority were worried.
0:36:23 > 0:36:26Certain groups of Americans in the late 19th Century
0:36:26 > 0:36:31did not treat the vanishing of what they saw as wild nature,
0:36:31 > 0:36:36and of the noble animals like buffalo and elk as a good thing.
0:36:36 > 0:36:39And they have a rationale for it. In the late 19th Century,
0:36:39 > 0:36:40there's a crisis of manhood.
0:36:40 > 0:36:44There's a sense that the Americans seemed to be growing soft,
0:36:44 > 0:36:46they seemed to be growing effete,
0:36:46 > 0:36:49they seemed to be growing more and more like Europeans.
0:36:49 > 0:36:51And the only way to counter this
0:36:51 > 0:36:53is how Americans countered it in the past,
0:36:53 > 0:36:55is this confrontation with raw nature.
0:36:59 > 0:37:01But you can't have a confrontation with raw nature,
0:37:01 > 0:37:06you can't, in fact, absorb its values, toughen yourself up,
0:37:06 > 0:37:09if there is no wild nature left to go into.
0:37:09 > 0:37:12So it becomes essential for American manhood itself
0:37:12 > 0:37:16to preserve a vestige of the game, to preserve a vestige of nature.
0:37:18 > 0:37:23One upper-class, East-Coast man who embodied these concerns
0:37:23 > 0:37:25was George Bird Grinnell.
0:37:27 > 0:37:33He was a Yale-educated naturalist, palaeontologist, and big game hunter
0:37:33 > 0:37:36who became editor of Forest and Stream,
0:37:36 > 0:37:38a hunting and fishing magazine.
0:37:40 > 0:37:44He managed to turn Forest and Stream magazine
0:37:44 > 0:37:48into the foremost voice for American conservation,
0:37:48 > 0:37:52and Yellowstone was one of his pet issues.
0:37:53 > 0:37:57Grinnell had witnessed the slaughter of Yellowstone's wildlife
0:37:57 > 0:38:00on his first visit to the park in 1875.
0:38:02 > 0:38:05Ironically, it was this sport-hunter
0:38:05 > 0:38:09who would see Yellowstone's potential as a wildlife preserve,
0:38:09 > 0:38:13particularly for bison, which were on the brink of extinction.
0:38:13 > 0:38:19By the 1880s, Yellowstone National Park held America's last,
0:38:19 > 0:38:20free-roaming herd.
0:38:23 > 0:38:28To someone with Grinnell's savvy about biology, about politics,
0:38:28 > 0:38:31about media, about public interest,
0:38:31 > 0:38:34they were such an obvious and powerful symbol,
0:38:34 > 0:38:38you just couldn't not see the opportunity they presented.
0:38:40 > 0:38:44Grinnell launched a campaign to save Yellowstone's bison,
0:38:44 > 0:38:49calling for a law to ban hunting in the National Park,
0:38:49 > 0:38:53and requesting the Army be brought in to stop the poaching.
0:38:53 > 0:38:57But without legislation, even they were powerless to end the slaughter.
0:38:58 > 0:39:03In 1894, Yellowstone and the bison got lucky.
0:39:03 > 0:39:09Grinnell had sent a young reporter named Emerson Hough to the park.
0:39:11 > 0:39:15Whilst he was there, the authorities got a tip-off
0:39:15 > 0:39:18that a notorious local poacher was in the park, killing bison,
0:39:18 > 0:39:23and Hough accompanied army scouts to the scene of the crime.
0:39:23 > 0:39:26He had shot six.
0:39:26 > 0:39:28GUNSHOT
0:39:28 > 0:39:32So he was in process of gutting out a bison and cutting off its head
0:39:32 > 0:39:38when up came the soldiers and drew a bead on him and hands in the air.
0:39:40 > 0:39:43Hough's poaching story was just what Grinnell needed
0:39:43 > 0:39:45to galvanise public support for his campaign
0:39:45 > 0:39:51for government legislation to protect Yellowstone's bison.
0:39:51 > 0:39:55It incensed the American populous.
0:39:55 > 0:40:00Those in Congress were able to use this as an impetus
0:40:00 > 0:40:05to get this bill passed to protect Yellowstone's wildlife.
0:40:06 > 0:40:12In 1894, it became illegal to hunt in Yellowstone National Park.
0:40:21 > 0:40:24In the nick of time, Americans had recognised
0:40:24 > 0:40:27the aesthetic and cultural value of their wildlife.
0:40:29 > 0:40:34Once animals came along as an important visitor attraction
0:40:34 > 0:40:40there was this whole new dimension of things for people to care about.
0:40:42 > 0:40:47Geysers were swell and beautiful scenery was swell
0:40:47 > 0:40:51but it was all a little remote from your average American
0:40:51 > 0:40:54who could identify a lot more with big brown eyes
0:40:54 > 0:40:56and beautiful antlers and all those kinds of things.
0:40:58 > 0:41:03Henceforth, wildlife would take up its place alongside monumental scenery
0:41:03 > 0:41:08as a defining feature of wilderness in the American mind.
0:41:15 > 0:41:18As more wild lands were set aside as National Parks,
0:41:18 > 0:41:20and tourist numbers increased,
0:41:20 > 0:41:24it was clear that the park system needed bespoke management.
0:41:24 > 0:41:30As a result, the National Park Service was created in 1916.
0:41:33 > 0:41:39The most important goal of the early Park Service in the United States
0:41:39 > 0:41:42was to take these places and make them accessible.
0:41:42 > 0:41:45So building highways, building overlooks,
0:41:45 > 0:41:49guiding the tourists through these landscapes,
0:41:49 > 0:41:50making them car friendly.
0:41:50 > 0:41:55All of that is central to the core of the Park Service project
0:41:55 > 0:41:58from 1916 for the next 30 years, really.
0:42:00 > 0:42:01Wildlife fitted into this agenda
0:42:01 > 0:42:04because of its value as a tourist attraction.
0:42:06 > 0:42:09The new Park Service did what it could to ensure that tourists
0:42:09 > 0:42:13got to see animals at close quarters.
0:42:13 > 0:42:17The superintendent at Yellowstone, Horace Albright,
0:42:17 > 0:42:20who would later become Director of the entire Parks system,
0:42:20 > 0:42:22pioneered this approach.
0:42:23 > 0:42:27He believed that the animals should be more or less exhibited,
0:42:27 > 0:42:31like a zoo, you know, fence them and put them in these little...
0:42:31 > 0:42:34little enclosures, and feed them, which is what a zoo is all about,
0:42:34 > 0:42:38and let the public see them that way as entertainment.
0:42:39 > 0:42:42Partly to this end, Horace Albright maintained
0:42:42 > 0:42:46a captive breeding programme for bison in Yellowstone.
0:42:46 > 0:42:51For him that meant visitors driving the roads,
0:42:51 > 0:42:54see some bison off in the distance and think,
0:42:54 > 0:42:57"Oh, those are wild, native bison."
0:42:57 > 0:43:00When, in fact, discretely concealed,
0:43:00 > 0:43:03was the fence that kept them in view
0:43:03 > 0:43:06and that was... that was good enough for Horace
0:43:06 > 0:43:09and actually, it was probably good enough
0:43:09 > 0:43:11for almost all of the visitors of the time.
0:43:14 > 0:43:18Most people in early 20th-century America
0:43:18 > 0:43:21saw wild creatures in sentimental terms,
0:43:21 > 0:43:24and as symbols of their frontier past.
0:43:24 > 0:43:28They did not yet appreciate the innate wildness of animals,
0:43:28 > 0:43:30nor the relationship between species.
0:43:31 > 0:43:35Ecology was still a science in its infancy.
0:43:37 > 0:43:43There was this idea that there were good animals and bad animals
0:43:43 > 0:43:46and the good animals were deer and elk
0:43:46 > 0:43:51and these pretty little herbivores that, you know, cavorted gaily
0:43:51 > 0:43:55in the meadows and ate grasses and did no harm,
0:43:55 > 0:43:57and were idyllic.
0:43:57 > 0:44:03And the bad animals were predators, animals of the fang and claw.
0:44:07 > 0:44:09Human beings had this duty
0:44:09 > 0:44:12to protect the good animals from the bad animals
0:44:12 > 0:44:15and that we should therefore manipulate,
0:44:15 > 0:44:19we should kill all these bad animals, and just shoot them.
0:44:21 > 0:44:24Without understanding how ecosystems worked,
0:44:24 > 0:44:29men like Albright believed that killing predators would ensure
0:44:29 > 0:44:34larger numbers of the species that tourists wanted to see.
0:44:34 > 0:44:37So National Parks joined other government agencies
0:44:37 > 0:44:39in eradicating predators.
0:44:39 > 0:44:41GUNSHOTS
0:44:41 > 0:44:43WHIMPERING
0:44:45 > 0:44:49The last Yellowstone wolf was killed in 1926.
0:44:54 > 0:44:58So, by the time the Park Service has done all these things,
0:44:58 > 0:45:01it's a pretty ironic wilderness that's been created here,
0:45:01 > 0:45:05it's a kind of artificial construction of...
0:45:05 > 0:45:08a wilderness that meets people's needs,
0:45:08 > 0:45:10that is kind of a domesticated wilderness
0:45:10 > 0:45:16but it's hardly the authentic, real place that it purports itself to be.
0:45:18 > 0:45:21The average tourist may have been satisfied
0:45:21 > 0:45:24with a tame version of wilderness.
0:45:24 > 0:45:27But for a new generation of wildlife managers,
0:45:27 > 0:45:30the situation was deeply troubling.
0:45:30 > 0:45:33These were people who harkened back to the Romantic ideal
0:45:33 > 0:45:38of wilderness as a place to encounter raw nature
0:45:38 > 0:45:41but they were also schooled in the new science of ecology.
0:45:41 > 0:45:46The most influential of these was Aldo Leopold.
0:45:49 > 0:45:53Aldo Leopold, he is the person who in the middle of the 20th Century
0:45:53 > 0:45:59began to change the ideas of many Americans about
0:45:59 > 0:46:03what it was in wilderness that needed to be protected.
0:46:03 > 0:46:09He saw wilderness as an ecological baseline against which to compare
0:46:09 > 0:46:11all the systems that we have transformed.
0:46:11 > 0:46:16He was a passionate advocate of the primitive experience of the wild
0:46:16 > 0:46:19and it is really Leopold's ideas that point toward
0:46:19 > 0:46:23what the wilderness of the second half of the 20th Century
0:46:23 > 0:46:26and the wilderness of today, really, will become.
0:46:28 > 0:46:32Aldo Leopold began his career with the Forest Service in New Mexico.
0:46:32 > 0:46:40And when he was working in New Mexico he was a big advocate
0:46:40 > 0:46:44of protecting game through killing wolves and other predators.
0:46:45 > 0:46:52Aldo Leopold changed his mind quite publicly about his own beliefs.
0:46:52 > 0:46:56He's one of these people with a rare ability
0:46:56 > 0:46:59to admit to having been wrong.
0:47:02 > 0:47:05Leopold reversed his opinions on predators
0:47:05 > 0:47:09in an essay called Thinking Like A Mountain.
0:47:09 > 0:47:14He describes killing, with a group of his friends, a mother wolf,
0:47:14 > 0:47:19and going down to the wolf as she's dying, and he looks into her eyes
0:47:19 > 0:47:23and sees what he calls a fierce green fire dying in those eyes.
0:47:26 > 0:47:32That speaks to him as what for him becomes a voice of the mountain,
0:47:32 > 0:47:34a voice of the wilderness itself, saying,
0:47:34 > 0:47:36"This animal has a role to play here
0:47:36 > 0:47:39"and in fact this animal is protecting this ecosystem.
0:47:40 > 0:47:42"Those deer will destroy this ecosystem,
0:47:42 > 0:47:45"this wolf is protecting those places."
0:47:45 > 0:47:47WOLF HOWLS
0:47:48 > 0:47:51Leopold's story was prophetic
0:47:51 > 0:47:54and it was the management of Yellowstone's elk
0:47:54 > 0:47:57that eventually brought these ecological concerns to a head.
0:48:01 > 0:48:06Like bison, elk were popular with tourists and in the early days,
0:48:06 > 0:48:08the park managers had tried to boost their numbers
0:48:08 > 0:48:12by feeding them in winter and eliminating wolves.
0:48:12 > 0:48:15By 1910 to 1915, there was concerns
0:48:15 > 0:48:18of overgrazing, they saw soil erosion,
0:48:18 > 0:48:21they saw excessive browsing on the willows
0:48:21 > 0:48:25and the aspen species, and the berry-producing shrubs
0:48:25 > 0:48:28and so people were worried that there were too many elk now
0:48:28 > 0:48:31and that the elk were over-grazing the park.
0:48:32 > 0:48:36To protect Yellowstone's willows, aspen and other vegetation,
0:48:36 > 0:48:40the Park Service tried to reduce the number of elk by trapping
0:48:40 > 0:48:43and trans-locating them to other parts of the West.
0:48:43 > 0:48:46But numbers still increased.
0:48:47 > 0:48:52In 1940, Aldo Leopold suggested reintroducing wolves
0:48:52 > 0:48:55to control the elk population
0:48:55 > 0:48:58but few people countenanced the idea at the time.
0:49:00 > 0:49:04So elk numbers rose, and reluctantly the park began to cull them.
0:49:05 > 0:49:09Rangers went out and, in the early 1960s,
0:49:09 > 0:49:12killed thousands and thousands of elk. The peak was one year
0:49:12 > 0:49:16where they killed more than 3,000 elk in one winter.
0:49:16 > 0:49:23In doing that, they finally crossed a threshold of public tolerance.
0:49:23 > 0:49:25GUNSHOT
0:49:26 > 0:49:28It was a public relations disaster.
0:49:29 > 0:49:32Yellowstone announced they would stop the elk cull.
0:49:32 > 0:49:37But the government appointed an independent team of ecologists
0:49:37 > 0:49:41to look at how the National Park Service was managing its wildlife.
0:49:41 > 0:49:46And then lo and behold, in 1963, the scientific community issued
0:49:46 > 0:49:49what was called the Leopold Report.
0:49:49 > 0:49:54And that changed everything in National Parks.
0:49:59 > 0:50:03The report reflected a modern, ecological view of wilderness,
0:50:03 > 0:50:06and proposed a new mission statement for parks
0:50:06 > 0:50:09that would see them not just as tourist destinations
0:50:09 > 0:50:12but as historically authentic ecosystems.
0:50:15 > 0:50:18"We would recommend that each park be maintained,
0:50:18 > 0:50:22"or where necessary recreated, as nearly as possible in the condition
0:50:22 > 0:50:26"that prevailed when the area was first visited by the white man."
0:50:28 > 0:50:33"A National Park should represent a vignette of primitive America."
0:50:35 > 0:50:38This really became the staple for a generation
0:50:38 > 0:50:42of scientifically-trained ecologists in managing of National Park lands.
0:50:42 > 0:50:46What they sought to do was to reconstitute wildlife populations
0:50:46 > 0:50:51and distributions within a park that might closely approximate
0:50:51 > 0:50:54the diversity and arrangements that were present 180 years ago.
0:50:56 > 0:51:00If Yellowstone was going to be returned to a "vignette of primitive America",
0:51:00 > 0:51:05then Aldo Leopold's proposal for the reintroduction of the wolf
0:51:05 > 0:51:07was finally on the agenda.
0:51:09 > 0:51:12Many people have questioned that Yellowstone might have had
0:51:12 > 0:51:15too many ungulates, too many elk,
0:51:15 > 0:51:17and what was their impact on the ecosystem.
0:51:17 > 0:51:21And perhaps wolves could weigh in on that situation
0:51:21 > 0:51:23and change the dynamic naturally.
0:51:23 > 0:51:29So, Yellowstone really was some of the best wolf habitat in the world,
0:51:29 > 0:51:31without any wolves here.
0:51:31 > 0:51:36But it was still decades before Aldo Leopold's dream was realised.
0:51:37 > 0:51:42I can remember when I was wearing my ranger hat in the 1970s
0:51:42 > 0:51:44and giving my campfire programmes,
0:51:44 > 0:51:47that the restoration of the wolf seemed like some...
0:51:48 > 0:51:52..fantastically remote thing that would happen in a better age.
0:51:52 > 0:51:59You know, that we would have to come a long way as a society
0:51:59 > 0:52:03before we would be prepared to overcome all of our prejudices
0:52:03 > 0:52:05and do right thing.
0:52:06 > 0:52:08So you can imagine how I felt when it happened.
0:52:10 > 0:52:15In January 1995, six wild wolves were brought from Canada
0:52:15 > 0:52:17to Yellowstone National Park.
0:52:17 > 0:52:20I was there, you know,
0:52:20 > 0:52:23I remember the trailer was maybe two cars
0:52:23 > 0:52:29ahead of the car I was in, and off to the left I could see a cow elk,
0:52:29 > 0:52:30watching it go by.
0:52:32 > 0:52:36You're thinking, "You don't know," you know?
0:52:36 > 0:52:40"You can't know but you'll figure it out."
0:52:40 > 0:52:44It was things like that, that allowed it to finally sink in
0:52:44 > 0:52:46and make me realise this is really happening.
0:52:46 > 0:52:49And then I was just jazzed.
0:52:49 > 0:52:53I was so excited, you know, I had to run around.
0:53:00 > 0:53:04The wolves were allowed to acclimatize in pens for a few weeks
0:53:04 > 0:53:08before they were released into the park to roam free.
0:53:08 > 0:53:10That summer I was hiking with a friend
0:53:10 > 0:53:13and we were staying in one of the back country patrol cabins.
0:53:13 > 0:53:18And about two in morning we got up to answer the call of nature,
0:53:18 > 0:53:21quite by chance at the same time.
0:53:21 > 0:53:24And we're both standing outside the cabin
0:53:24 > 0:53:30when we hear this long, sustained, throaty howl.
0:53:30 > 0:53:33HOWLING
0:53:35 > 0:53:42And I remember thinking, "I am so lucky to be here to hear that.
0:53:42 > 0:53:45"this first year of the reintroduction,
0:53:45 > 0:53:50"when that sound has essentially not been heard in Yellowstone
0:53:50 > 0:53:52"for more than 60 years."
0:53:54 > 0:53:57Not everyone greeted the wolves with enthusiasm,
0:53:57 > 0:54:00particularly once their numbers increased
0:54:00 > 0:54:03and they spread outside the park.
0:54:03 > 0:54:07When you are a rancher in the American west raising cattle
0:54:07 > 0:54:10and you've got wolves that are killing calves,
0:54:10 > 0:54:13you see those wolves as competitors to your livelihood,
0:54:13 > 0:54:16they're undermining your way of life.
0:54:16 > 0:54:19If you're not a rancher, if you're a tourist,
0:54:19 > 0:54:22if you're wanting to go and experience wilderness as it is,
0:54:22 > 0:54:25then nothing is nobler, nothing is wilder
0:54:25 > 0:54:28than a pack of wolves running across that landscape.
0:54:31 > 0:54:32For many Americans,
0:54:32 > 0:54:35the wolf has become THE iconic wilderness species.
0:54:35 > 0:54:39A romantic symbol of wildness.
0:54:42 > 0:54:45And now wolves are transforming the Yellowstone ecosystem.
0:54:45 > 0:54:49We're finding that wolves are keystone species
0:54:49 > 0:54:53and what that is, an animal that occurs in fairly low numbers,
0:54:53 > 0:54:57or at low density, that has large effects.
0:55:00 > 0:55:02The importance of wolves can be seen in the recovery
0:55:02 > 0:55:06of some of the vegetation that we have here in Yellowstone.
0:55:06 > 0:55:10Plants like aspen, willow and cottonwood
0:55:10 > 0:55:13not growing for a very long time.
0:55:13 > 0:55:18Since wolves have been restored, they've started growing more.
0:55:19 > 0:55:22The resurgence of willow has allowed songbirds
0:55:22 > 0:55:24and beavers to make a comeback
0:55:24 > 0:55:28and the dams beavers build with willow trees
0:55:28 > 0:55:30provide habitats for countless other creatures.
0:55:32 > 0:55:35Do wolves have something to do with that?
0:55:35 > 0:55:39Wolves eat elk, and elk eat willow,
0:55:39 > 0:55:42and wolves may have changed that dynamic.
0:55:46 > 0:55:48The return of the wolf to Yellowstone
0:55:48 > 0:55:52is, for many, the fulfilment of an ecological vision
0:55:52 > 0:55:56of what National Parks and wilderness should be about.
0:55:56 > 0:55:59That is, "vignettes of primitive America".
0:56:02 > 0:56:05Areas that are maintained in the ecological state
0:56:05 > 0:56:08in which they were found by the first white visitors.
0:56:09 > 0:56:13And yet, there has always been something missing
0:56:13 > 0:56:16from the ecological vision of wilderness.
0:56:17 > 0:56:19Wolves were never a keystone species,
0:56:19 > 0:56:21humans were actually the keystone species.
0:56:21 > 0:56:25The humans were the important predators, the keystone predators,
0:56:25 > 0:56:27and they were the keystone fire-starters on it
0:56:27 > 0:56:31that created the ecosystems you think are actually natural.
0:56:31 > 0:56:33National Parks turns out to be entirely unnatural,
0:56:33 > 0:56:36because you don't have humans in the system.
0:56:37 > 0:56:4220th-century ecological debates about wilderness
0:56:42 > 0:56:46took place without reference to the role American Indians had played
0:56:46 > 0:56:50in shaping the wild plant and animal populations
0:56:50 > 0:56:53that park managers and conservationists
0:56:53 > 0:56:54were trying to protect.
0:56:55 > 0:57:01It is a testimony to the power of the Romantic 19th-century vision of wilderness
0:57:01 > 0:57:04that ecologists could have been so blind.
0:57:06 > 0:57:09Ecologists are human beings like all the rest of us.
0:57:09 > 0:57:12We inhabit cultures and our cultures teach us
0:57:12 > 0:57:16to see certain things and not see certain other things.
0:57:16 > 0:57:20American ecology grew up with an idea of wilderness
0:57:20 > 0:57:23that lead ecologists to seek out landscapes
0:57:23 > 0:57:26that were as unmodified by people as they could imagine.
0:57:28 > 0:57:33In America today, the very idea of wilderness is being challenged.
0:57:34 > 0:57:39American Indians are fighting for the right to access National Parks
0:57:39 > 0:57:42to practice religious ceremonies at sacred sites
0:57:42 > 0:57:45and to hunt and gather traditional wild foods.
0:57:47 > 0:57:51Archaeologists are revealing the full extent to which Indian tribes
0:57:51 > 0:57:55manipulated their environments in the past.
0:57:55 > 0:57:59And their findings are informing the way that ecologists manage
0:57:59 > 0:58:02some wilderness areas today.
0:58:02 > 0:58:06But the model of pristine wilderness that evolved in Yellowstone,
0:58:06 > 0:58:10and was later applied to wild places around the world,
0:58:10 > 0:58:15still dominates the way that most of us think about wild nature today.
0:58:20 > 0:58:23In the next programme, we look at how new discoveries
0:58:23 > 0:58:27are re-writing the history, and, very possibly, the future,
0:58:27 > 0:58:32of one of the last great wildernesses, the Amazon.
0:58:53 > 0:58:56Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
0:58:56 > 0:59:00Email subtitling@bbc.co.uk