Desert Heartlands Wild West - America's Great Frontier

In the far west of America,

there's a legendary land.

The haunt of cowboys...

..and home to great Native American civilisations...

RATTLING

..where the promise of gold drew those seeking their fortune.

Here, over millions of years,

powerful forces have forged some of

the most dramatic landscapes on Earth.

From the continent's hottest deserts and red rock canyons...

..to towering mountain worlds, cloaked in snow.

And the most mysterious, magical coastline.

It takes a special breed with bold ambition and a pioneering spirit...

..to tame this fabled place and make it home.

The Wild West.

Nowhere is a tougher place to live in America's Wild West...

..than the desert.

Most of the land is bone dry...

..and fresh water is hard to find.

To prosper here means evolving in extreme ways.

You need to profoundly understand this world

and adapt to every opportunity.

But, with the Wild West's famed True Grit, there are ways to win through.

If there's one animal that defines this world, it's the horse.

First introduced by Spanish explorers in the 16th century and

later adopted by cowboys and Native Americans.

Over time, many horses broke free from the reins of man...

..finding a new home in the wild.

Some chose to settle here, in the Great Basin Desert of Nevada.

200,000 square miles of wilderness.

They were given the name Mustang,

meaning "the animal that strays".

Today, more than 50,000 Mustang roam the deserts of America.

This mother, and her four-week-old foal, are part of a ten-strong band,

always on the move, searching for food and water.

Now, in early spring,

fresh grass is hard to find and it only provides a little moisture.

Mustang are big, thirsty animals -

they need to drink 70 litres of water a day.

So, where to find it

in this cold, high desert?

There are springs hidden among these mountains, but they are fickle.

It's hard to predict when they're flowing and when they're not.

Knowing where to look takes great wisdom and experience.

The mother with the foal is the leader of this band,

she takes the herd down ancient trails

she and her ancestors have long trodden.

She knows not to climb too high, where cold air freezes the water...

..or too low, where the water drains quickly into soft soil.

These are important life lessons for the foal.

But travelling up to ten miles a day,

it's really tough for him to keep up on this punishing terrain.

His mother is torn.

The herd want her to push on and lead them to water...

..but her foal also needs her help.

FOAL WHINNIES

A mother's instinct is too strong.

One last try.

Learning the hard way breeds a tough brand.

Relief at last.

For Mustangs,

it takes teamwork and tenacity

to survive in America's deserts.

The deserts of the Wild West span 600 miles

and lie between two great mountain ranges...

..the Rocky Mountains to the east

and the Sierra Nevada to the west.

Their peaks intercept clouds,

leaving the land in between parched and inhospitable...

..with an average of less than ten inches of rain each year.

Across Utah stretch Red Rock Canyon lands,

the stronghold for cowboys and outlaws.

The inspiration for westerns.

In eastern California, the great Mojave Desert,

the lowest-lying and driest of all America's deserts.

Here, early American pioneers, like the fabled '49ers, lost their way,

perishing in the heat,

giving this place the name Death Valley.

To the far south in Arizona,

the Sonoran Desert, studded with giant cacti.

Saguaro cactus stand up to 60 feet tall

and can live for 200 years.

These giants play the long game.

So little rain falls here, they may only grow an inch a year.

Every drop of moisture is stored under thick, spiny skin.

And their roots fan out 30 feet and more, just beneath the surface.

They share this brutally hot and dry world with creatures perfectly

adapted to make this their home.

Reptiles.

Thick scales protect them from the sun and excessive water loss.

RATTLING

This is the Gila monster...

..America's largest lizard.

Two feet long with a venomous bite.

It spends most of the year underground,

living off the fat stored in its tail.

Only emerging for a few weeks a year to feed.

It's after the eggs of ground-nesting birds,

especially quail - a delicacy.

Gila monsters can eat one third of their body weight in one hit.

Horned lizards get their food and moisture

from something far smaller...

..ants.

They are poor in nutrition and tough to digest.

To make matters worse,

the sting from these harvester ants is both toxic and painful.

So, the lizard catapults the ants to the back of his throat,

engulfing them in mucus.

Over millennia, these lizards have devised smart strategies

for desert survival.

Nature can succeed here with extreme adaptation.

But for people, living in the desert takes generations of learning.

The first people of the Wild West were Native Americans,

skilled hunters who knew every kind of animal in the land.

1,500 years ago, some chose to settle here.

..building elaborate cliff dwellings in this desert canyon in Colorado.

Shaded in the summer

and warmed by the sun in the winter.

This is Mesa Verde,

one of the oldest farming settlements in the Wild West.

5,000 people once lived here...

..hunting, and later, working the land.

But this lifestyle wasn't to last.

In the 13th century, a 25-year drought crippled the place...

..forcing people to move on.

Some migrated south to Northern Arizona

to establish a new life,

which continues today.

Here she talks about very trying times of hardship.

Among them was famine,

caused by drought.

Those were periods of our time that...

..caused people to reassess who they were,

because the environment was telling them something.

Hopi are descendants of the Hisatsinom, "the ancient ones".

More than 1,000 years of learning

has helped them sustain their life and culture.

Here today in the Hopi mesas,

we live in a place where we have only 12 inches of rainfall a year.

And yet, we are able to grow corn.

In the high deserts of Arizona,

the Hopi's success is nothing short of a miracle.

And for Leigh Kuwanwisiwma,

these fields represent a lifetime of dedication.

I grew up being in the cornfield.

You grew up learning from your parents,

your uncles, your grandparents,

which I did.

When you grow up in that kind of culture, you know the seasons,

you know the soil,

you know the time to plant certain types of seeds.

We're taught to be very resourceful with water.

We can see we're in the middle of the valley here.

During rainstorms, the waters come in

and flood, so it spreads out over this basin.

That's how the Hopi farms are maintained

without any kind of irrigation.

Over time, we learned how to respect the environment,

we learned how to produce corn,

but also our corn became extraordinarily drought resistant.

So today, we're able to grow corn even in the driest years.

The Hopi have learned how to live in the desert

because of wisdom handed down through generations.

The irony is that there was a time

when the Wild West wasn't so challenging.

One million years ago, these deserts were different.

Huge lakes and vast rivers covered this land.

As the Earth's climate warmed,

the water all but disappeared...

..leaving behind a beautiful, but parched world.

The power of rain, rivers and wind...

..has left its legacy throughout Utah's slot canyons.

The Navajo knew these slots

as the place where water runs through rocks.

They called it Tse bighanilini.

Today, the largest permanent watercourse

running through these canyon lands

is one mighty river - the Colorado...

..cutting its way through the heart of the Wild West,

carrying rain and meltwater from the Rockies.

Over millennia, this water has eroded layer after layer of rock...

..exposing nearly 2 billion years of the Earth's history

and leaving a spectacular legacy -

The Grand Canyon.

By the time the Colorado reaches the heart of the desert,

the water is trapped deep inside the canyon a mile down...

..virtually unreachable.

But the real lifeblood of the desert is rain.

The difficulty is predicting where and when it will fall.

For a few weeks a year, thanks to changing currents and wind patterns,

heavy clouds roll in off the Pacific,

past the Sierra Nevada mountains

and reach as far inland as Arizona's Sonoran Desert.

THUNDER RUMBLES

These rains don't last long, but each drop is a vital catalyst.

BIRD CALLS

The desert is magically transformed.

For the first time in a year, there is colour.

And the chance for new life.

Gila woodpeckers nest in holes they've drilled

in the trunks of giant cacti.

Cactus wrens and thrashers

like to build their nests among as many spines

as possible to protect their chicks.

They are all waiting...

..to cash in on the cactus bee gold rush.

BUZZING

For just a few days, thousands of bees emerge from the ground to mate.

Males fight for females, resulting in chaotic mating balls.

Food for everyone.

But where to start?

So many to choose from!

The birds use all sorts of different tactics

to snare as many bees as they can.

A long bill certainly helps.

CHICKS CHIRP

To succeed in this desert, you must always be ready to seize the moment.

And why share?

In a matter of hours,

thousands of bees are caught to fuel the next generation.

But the gold rush isn't QUITE over.

Right at the end of the short rains,

when most other flowers have faded...

..giant cactuses make their play.

Saguaro cactuses produced creamy,

white flowers, rich in pungent nectar,

enticing some surprising pollinators...

..lesser long-nosed bats.

Their long, narrow snouts and brush-tipped tongues,

help them probe for nectar.

They may only visit a flower once in the night and sip for less than a

second, but it's just enough to pollinate it.

Nothing lasts long here - within a day, each flower wilts and dies...

..its job done.

Storing water is one of nature's greatest challenges

that few have truly mastered.

All through the spring,

honeypot ants have been collecting nectar from flowers.

Deep underground in secret chambers,

they share their treasure.

But, they have an ulterior motive.

The nectar collectors feed other ants...

..until their skin stretches

and their abdomen swells 20 times its normal size,

becoming so large they will never be able to leave the ant nest.

They are prisoners for life.

When food above the surface begins to run out,

this living larder will save the entire colony.

Hundreds of these slave ants

regurgitate their sweet drink into the mouths

of hungry workers.

It means these ants can survive here all year,

even when the desert is at its most unproductive.

Evolving ingenious strategies to get you through the tough times

is essential in the Wild West.

Nowhere more so than here,

in the desert with the highest temperatures on record...

the Mojave.

282 feet below sea level - the lowest point in America.

Welcome to Death Valley.

In 1848, prospectors discovered the first gold nugget in the Mojave...

..sparking a rush of fortune seekers.

Thousands headed west to this brutal land.

For the first time in history, the desert was bustling with life.

At its peak,

the gold town of Rhyolite was home to more than 5,000 people.

But the boom was a flash in the pan.

The costs of working in this remote and inhospitable desert

soon exceeded the wealth being drawn from the earth.

In less than 20 years, Rhyolite became a ghost town.

BIRD CALLS

OWL HOOTS

For the settlers, desert life was just too demanding.

But imagine if you had to live here day in, day out?

Searing heat...

..virtually no drinkable water

and precious little food.

Some animals just take it in their stride.

Coyotes, hunters at the top of the food chain.

Only here, in Death Valley, that food chain is desperately short.

Large mammals are not on the menu.

Mojave coyotes must adapt to a more modest way of life.

Using their sharp sense of smell and hearing,

they search out the tiniest of prey.

Every morsel counts.

It might mean they're only half the size of coyotes found in richer

habitats, but they have successfully adapted to this brutal desert world.

Others in the Mojave prefer to shut out the worst of this world.

Mojave tortoises conserve energy

by spending most of the year underground

in their shaded borrows.

They emerge for short spells during spring and autumn

to find food and moisture.

But this male has other things on his mind...

He's on the hunt for any females in his territory.

He may just be in luck.

Even if he can entice her out of her burrow, he's still got to charm her.

These things take time.

Best save his energy for the cool of dusk.

Despite hours of wooing, he's not got far.

Time to try a few gentle nibbles.

She's still not convinced.

Now for something a bit more... forceful.

Still no joy.

But after a year underground, he is not going to give up now.

Luckily, desert tortoises choose to live life in the slow lane.

So, there's no real urgency.

Where the Mojave Desert meets the Great Basin Desert,

lies a strange paradox.

The remnants of an ancient lake that once covered much of the deserts of

Utah and Nevada.

Mono Lake - highly alkaline...

..twice as salty as the ocean and completely undrinkable.

Yet, Mono Lake is still tolerated by some strange insects.

Alkali flies.

They have the ability to neutralise the toxic water.

Their fine hairs catch air bubbles, allowing them to walk underwater

to feed on algae.

In the warmest months, swarms grow to be a trillion strong.

When they reach their peak,

hundreds of thousands of migrating birds arrive

out of the blue to feed and drink.

Each fly provides the birds with a welcome drop of water.

It takes skill to pluck a fly from the air.

Phalaropes are the experts.

California gulls are rather less refined.

In just four weeks, the phalaropes double their weight.

The fly numbers drop when the desert cools again...

..and the migratory birds move on.

All that's left is a silent, toxic lake.

The deserts of the Wild West

play many tricks on those that try to live here.

And cruellest of all,

is that beneath this desert lies one of the largest bodies of underground

water in America.

A giant, freshwater aquifer,

locked in permeable rock,

under great salt crusts.

In a few places, fault lines bring this water to the surface.

A welcome sight, but appearances are deceptive.

This fresh water is heated by the sun to 44 Celsius.

And as it soaks up desert minerals,

it becomes three times saltier than the sea.

And yet, these little pupfish thrive here,

stranded in these oxygen-poor pools.

They've even evolved to stop breathing altogether,

sometimes for five hours at a time.

They were once much more widespread,

but over the last 10,000 years, as America's deserts have got drier

and drier, they've become ever more isolated.

They are, perhaps, the ultimate desert survivors.

Nature has found a unique way to survive,

even in the most testing places,

where man has always struggled.

But the 21st-century is a dawn of a new era.

With technology on our side,

we are finally able to harness the power of the desert...

..harvesting energy from nature.

We can even transform the hottest, driest,

most impossible corner of America's deserts...

..by tapping into Death Valley's underground aquifer...

..creating perhaps, the strangest wildlife refuge in America...

..in a place called Furnace Creek.

A verdant golf course,

a magnet for all sorts of wildlife.

BIRD CALLS

The coyote,

always the opportunist.

This coyote is after birds, attracted to the oasis.

Trouble is, how to get them?

The reeds offer some camouflage, but it's a long shot.

There are far better opportunities on the open fairways.

Being adaptable to change and seizing any opportunity

is key to success in America's Wild West.

PUP BARKS

It has even allowed this coyote to raise her family here.

In America's Wild West,

everyone has had to find ingenious ways to win through.

Passing on knowledge to new generations...

..waiting patiently...

..adapting quickly.

And creating new life.

In a land forged by ancient water

and burnt by the sun,

the hostility of the desert

is a constant challenge to generation after generation.

But, at the heart of survival here is something simple.

Water is life.

We are of the Earth

and the Earth sustains us because of water.

Many have misjudged the power of the desert and failed.

But if you are prepared to learn its secrets,

it is possible to gain freedom and a love for this spectacular world.

I'll farm as long as I can - it's my life and...

..I'll do it hopefully when I'm still 200 years old.

It's a good life.

The driest, hottest deserts in America

are home to the real pioneers and

true survivors of the Wild West.

Death Valley in the Mojave Desert.

The hottest place on Earth.

But there is one creature that lives here

that embodies the challenges of the Wild West -

..the wily coyote.

So we set our sights on telling their story and with luck,

filming them hunting.

Notorious for fleeing at the first sight of people,

one thing's for sure -

coyotes are also camera shy.

To stand a chance,

the crew need to find a location in this vast desert

with plentiful prey for coyotes.

Field director Will Lawson and cameraman John Benam

have heard of somewhere that might fit the bill.

An unexpected place...

..Furnace Creek golf course.

This is an oasis in the desert where man has tapped into the underground

aquifer lying beneath Death Valley.

The abundance of water here attracts all sorts of animals.

Perfect food for coyotes.

It's midsummer, the hottest time of year.

Hot enough to take your breath away.

That is unbelievable.

What?

-Look, look!

-116!

Oh, my God!

In the combination of the heat,

in the combination of actually filming coyotes in the wild,

it's a near impossible task and we have to do that in the midst of this

oven that we're calling Death Valley.

We're going to have a bit of a challenge here.

The coyotes living around the golf course

have become surprisingly relaxed about humans,

so filming them here gives the crew at least a fighting chance.

The coyotes are certainly everywhere,

but John and Will soon find it a struggle to keep track of them.

Even here, wily coyotes are still living up to their reputation.

John, come in for Will, can you see them on your side?

'Yes, you should come back over this side, over.'

John, I think they're actually moving left now.

I cannot keep up with her.

It's amazing how they can duck through little bits of shrubbery

and disappear.

They never stop, they never stand still and they are moving in and out

of thick vegetation on the edge of this golf course all the time,

out to the palm groves, back onto the golf course, out to the desert,

back onto the palm groves.

God, it's really frustrating. They're really elusive.

John, I've run out of battery.

'Roger that.'

Even the golf buggy can't keep up.

I was just a second behind, every time, trying to keep up with her.

Very elusive.

It's coming up to 9 o'clock and it's already broken the 100-degree

Fahrenheit mark, which is about 38 degrees or something like that.

Not that the coyotes seem bothered.

We thought that the heat was going to be a problem,

but it actually turns out that the wind is even worse.

We can't hold the camera steady,

you get dust in your eyes.

It seems like the coyotes don't want to hang around

when it's windy as well. So,

it's been a frustrating day. Really frustrating.

DUCK QUACKS

What's also frustrating is that although the crew have seen

coyotes with food,

they haven't caught them in the act.

We've gotten up really early this morning,

we wanted to try and see if on our last day,

we could get the coyotes hunting.

It would be the icing on the cake

if we managed to get that sort of behaviour.

This looks promising - heading somewhere with purpose.

Today's hunt ends in nothing more than date palms.

It's not exactly the behaviour they were hoping for,

but it does show how adaptable these coyotes are -

they'll eat almost anything.

A few months later, we get a tip-off from the golf course -

there's been a promising development.

So Will returns for another go, this time with local wildlife cameraman

Keith Brust.

At this time of year,

they get a lot of migrant birds moving from north to south,

stopping off on the golf course, taking advantage of the water there.

We've got reports that the coyotes take advantage of that.

I'm not ashamed to say

that many times I've been out-wilied by a coyote.

They're actually very smart.

I think I may not be coyote smart enough,

I'm barely human smart enough, so it's going to be quite a challenge!

But knowing that waterfowl are now on the coyote's menu,

the crew can stake out the ponds and adopt a sit-and-wait strategy.

They are frustratingly close to getting the shot.

She's stalking.

I hope she doesn't get one down in the shallow end,

cos I can't see anything down there.

Got two coyotes in the frame to start.

There it is.

Looks to his left. Oh, he's seen one!

Oh!

Oh, he had to make a hard turn and it dove in the water.

The coot just got away.

He's soaking wet.

Ah, he's just dripping.

He's like, "Ah, so close!"

Awesome.

Very exciting.

We got lots of bits and pieces we needed to tie things together,

but we still haven't got the shot that completes the hunt.

It's a bit disappointing.

At last!

Got some pretty unique behaviour...

-High five!

-Even here, the crew only saw this behaviour once.

The coyotes always stayed one step ahead.

Perhaps that's the secret to their success

in the deserts of the Wild West.

Next time - Wild West explores the mountains of America's high country.

In this unpredictable wilderness,

the changing seasons control all life.

To survive in this extreme world takes courage and cunning.

In the high country,

the West is still truly wild.