Original subtitles

NARRATOR: Yellowstone

volcanic wonderland.

Two million acres of wild space

right in the heart of North America.

The heat of the summer has unveiled

the full extent of the Yellowstone wilderness

and for a few precious months it has blossomed.

But now Yellowstone is changing.

In just a few weeks the snow and ice of winter will be back.

(BUGLING)

As the animals of Yellowstone now turn to face

perhaps the biggest challenges of their year

the true value of the world's first national park

is about to become clearer than ever.

"YELLOWSTONE"

"AUTUMN"

It's late August and on Yellowstone's peaks

there is already a dusting of fresh snow.

Now a new sound marks the new season.

(BUGLING)

Fuelled by testosterone

the bugle call of this male elk is a boast of his strength.

(SHRILL BUGLING)

All over Yellowstone

male elk are challenging each other for dominance.

(BUGLING)

The sound of Yellowstone's autumn.

(SHRILL BUGLING)

They are trying to win the admiration of females

and gather them into a harem.

Only then do they stand a chance at mating with them before winter.

But the females are not yet in season

so they are not really that interested.

And for now they have a more practical concern.

Winter will soon be here.

They are eager to head down to lower ground

before the snow comes in earnest.

Some will move down into nearby valleys

whilst others will journey much further

even beyond the boundaries of Yellowstone itself.

Yellowstone is deep in the Rocky Mountains of North America

an isolated high plateau defended by rugged peaks.

In the middle is the National Park.

The park and the surrounding mountains form one of the most important

and spectacular wilderness areas on Earth.

In just two months this great plateau will become a deep freeze once more.

Before then the animals of Yellowstone will have to get ready

or get out.

But for now below the snow-dusted peaks

summer still lingers in the heart of Yellowstone.

(GRUNTING)

The sun has revitalised this place

and now there are more living things here

than at any time of the year.

The summer has brought visitors too

who are enjoying Yellowstone at its most vibrant.

As the sun now starts to get lower in the sky

the rich colours make this

one of the best times to see the geysers.

On the grasslands the good times are already over.

These bison are making the most of the grazing

but it is now dry and parched.

From now on they will have to rely heavily on stored fat

to keep them going

as these meadows become covered in more than four feet of snow.

Others are already thinking of leaving.

Pronghorn evolved to outrun a now-extinct North American cheetah

and so are the fastest antelope on Earth.

But unlike bison their lightweight bodies can't store

enough energy to keep them here through the winter.

So now they must head out.

Their journey will be the longest of all.

But as many are preparing to get out some have no choice but to stay.

In the remote north east of the Yellowstone wilderness

are the Beartooth Mountains.

Here surviving above 8000 feet

a tree now welcomes the change of season

the whitebark pine.

All summer these trees have been soaking up the energy of the Sun

preparing for this moment.

Now they offer the animals of Yellowstone

a bumper crop of pine cones.

The whitebark pine is gambling on the fact

that animals now need all the food they can get before winter

and is hoping it can entice them to spread its seeds

far and wide across Yellowstone.

So inside the cones it has put tasty nutritious pine nuts.

A pine squirrel.

It snacks on a few of the nuts to keep going

and then buries them one by one in a sheltered hollow beside the tree.

If it hides them well and packs them carefully

they should last through the winter.

But this is not much good for the tree.

Its seeds have gone nowhere.

A grizzly bear mother and cubs.

It's unusual for a grizzly to have so many cubs.

This mother has found two orphans and adopted them.

But now she has four cubs to fatten up

before they go into the den to hibernate this winter.

She's after pine nuts too.

They are 50% fat.

In a good year a grizzly bear can put on five pounds a day

eating nuts alone.

If squirrels have done the hard work

it doesn't matter that grizzlies can't climb trees.

(SQUEAKS)

The squirrel will just have to start again.

Luckily this year the trees are being particularly generous.

A Clark's Nutcracker.

This is what the tree has been waiting for.

With its perfectly-shaped beak it prises the nuts from the cones

and tucks them one by one into a special pouch under its tongue

up to 1 50 at a time

a fifth of its entire body weight.

Then it flies as much as 1 5 miles away

and drills the nuts into the ground in sets of 1 0

placing a stone on top of the stash to mark the site.

It goes back

for more

and more.

Over the autumn a single bird can bury 30000 nuts

across an area of 1 00 square miles.

When the winter comes

it will manage to remember the location of a staggering 70% of these seeds

even when hidden beneath the snow.

But as the Clark's Nutcracker remembers its way into surviving the winter

it becomes the whitebark's greatest ally.

Although its feat of memory is extraordinary

for every 1000 seeds it buries it still forgets 300.

From all those missed seeds carried far and wide across Yellowstone

new whitebark pines will germinate next spring.

It's now September

and the elk have made their way down to graze

where the grass on the river banks is still green

and they can browse the nutritious shoots of young willow trees.

The males are now upping their game.

This bull urinates on himself to increase his masculine appeal

and by thrashing his antlers to decorate them

he hopes to make himself look more impressive.

(ELK BUGLING)

The females are paying a little more attention now.

(SHRILL BUGLING)

The bull has succeeded in gathering a fair-sized harem.

(SQUEALING)

But the females are still not quite ready to mate.

They are now focused on feeding as much as they can

before moving lower still.

But the elk are being watched.

(WOLF hOWLING)

Over the summer wolves have been less mobile because of their young pups

but their strength is building again.

The elk get twitchy and head for the cover of trees.

They may be a little safer here

but the food in the forest is far less nutritious than on the river banks.

If they want to eat well and avoid wolves this winter

they'll need to keep on moving.

(BARKING)

As the elk move gradually downwards

they follow the rivers out of Yellowstone's central plateau.

The rivers in turn follow the path of glaciers

that flowed from this great bowl in the last ice age

and carved their way right through the barrier of surrounding mountains.

Today these valleys are escape routes

for animals from the returning ice of winter.

Lower down the valleys broaden the rivers slow

and a richer variety of trees grows in the alluvial soils

the perfect home for Yellowstone's most industrious creature.

(SPLINTERING AND CRACKING)

A beaver can fell a cottonwood tree in just a few hours

hundreds in a year.

The beaver doesn't chew through the whole trunk

just enough to make the tree unstable.

It then retreats

and lets the wind do the rest.

(CREAKING)

(WIND BLOWING)

It cuts branches into more manageable lengths

and then swims them down a network of purpose-built canals towards the dam.

The pond gives this beaver protection from predators

and the canals allow it to forage far into the forest

carrying many times its own weight with ease.

Autumn is the busiest time of year for beavers.

It won't be so easy to make repairs when the pond is frozen over.

The sound of running water is their stimulus

to shore up gaps with timber and plug leaks with mud.

But the dam not only serves the beavers.

Moose come here from the forests around

to feed on weeds that thrive in the beaver's shallow pond.

The weed is rich in vital sodium that the forest can't easily provide.

But now that winter is approaching

another essential role for the dam is revealed.

These smaller branches are not for fixing the dam

they're for eating.

The beaver secures them to the mud in the lake bottom.

In just a few weeks this lake will be frozen

and the beavers won't be able to cut and move trees.

But they will be able to swim right under the ice

to feed from this underwater larder.

Moose also eat twigs and branches

and often try to take advantage of the beaver's hard labour.

This young male is getting a little too close to the beaver's larder.

Autumn is not a time for sharing.

(OWLS hOOTING)

It's mid-September.

As the sun drops further in the sky

the aspens cottonwoods and maples

start shutting down for the winter.

They now digest the green pigments in their leaves

to claw back what nutrients they can into the trunk and roots.

What's left behind make the colours of autumn.

Groves of aspen all turn at the same time.

Each grove descended from one tree

interconnected by roots

colour-coordinated.

As cold air sinks further down from the mountains

it brings autumn mist to Yellowstone's valleys.

It was in the autumn of 1 870

that the first official exploration party to Yellowstone

began to plan for the creation of the world's first national park

the beauty of Yellowstone's autumn

inspiring a complete change in the way we value the wild.

(BUGLING)

For the last six weeks of strutting and herding

male elk have eaten almost nothing.

They are exhausted.

This bull has done well.

He has successfully held on to his harem.

And now the females are finally coming into season.

But they are being distracted by another male.

(SHRILL BUGLING)

If a bull elk can't dominate all rivals he can't have access to the females

and all his effort will have been in vain.

Now he must gather the last of his strength.

The rival wants to take him on.

The aim is to get an antler point into his neck.

But they are evenly matched.

Neither can penetrate the other's guard.

Now it's all about power.

A well-aimed thrust or a broken neck will kill.

This challenger is lucky to get off with just a parting stab in the rump.

(SHRILL BUGLING)

The victor returns to his females.

His young will be born next spring.

(SQUEALING)

But the prospects are not so good for a defeated bull.

After all this effort

he will now have to wait until next autumn to try his luck again.

That's if he even makes it.

Bull elk exhausted by the rut

struggle to survive the Yellowstone winter.

It's now October

and the winter is catching up with the elk once more.

An early flurry of snow is a sign that it's time to make a decision.

To stay is to face the certainty of snow and wolves.

To go offers the chance of an easier life

but the uncertainty of the world beyond Yellowstone.

(BUGLING)

Every autumn thousands of elk do leave Yellowstone.

And as they go they cross an invisible line

out of the protection of the National Park.

Here they confront new danger.

Dressed in orange to avoid each other but a colour that elk can't see

hunters come to the forests just around Yellowstone in October

to shoot elk.

(GUNShOT)

(ELK BLEATING)

Elk of course have no understanding of park boundaries or of Yellowstone.

To them this is simply an instinctive migration

to find more hospitable land so they just keep going.

Beyond the ring of hunting lands

the natural mosaic of forest and grass

is replaced by an alien geometry.

Circles of irrigated grass

squares of maize

golf courses

the signature patterns of mankind.

It's unlikely they'll be welcome here.

By now the pronghorn have pushed further

than any of the Yellowstone's animals.

Out of forests through farmland

and down into the wide prairies

at the foot of the Rocky Mountains themselves.

Their search for winter grazing

takes them over 1 00 miles to the south of Yellowstone

the longest migration of any American mammal.

They have made this journey every year since the last ice age.

But nowadays they have a problem.

(TRUCK hONKING)

Their traditional winter refuges

lie right above some of the richest natural gas deposits in America.

The wells are no direct threat to pronghorn.

But pronghorn are timid.

(TRUCK hONKING)

At the slightest noise they run

and when they run they run at 60 miles per hour.

They evolved to avoid cheetahs not juggernauts.

Trucks fences

and the disturbance from the wells have put pronghorn at risk.

There are 1.2 million acres here

but 75% of it has now been earmarked for gas and oil.

Back in the farmland the elk have found food.

But this grass is not meant for them.

(COWS LOWING)

Ranchers will tolerate elk

as long as they don't compete too much with their cattle.

But as the elk move in their old enemy follows them out of Yellowstone

an animal that's more difficult for ranchers to accept.

In their minds fear of the wolf runs deep.

Even Yellowstone lost its wolves.

They were wiped out over 80 years ago.

After years of prejudice they were reintroduced in 1 995

brought back by the authorities to restore Yellowstone's natural balance.

But the wolves have done so well

that now they are moving out of the park looking for new territories

and prey.

Out here it's clearer to see why wolves have a bad reputation.

If ranchers' cattle are at risk by law wolves can be shot.

As wolves come back ranchers are being forced to return to the old ways

to get back into the saddle and protect their herds.

(BEEPING)

(BEEPING RISES IN PITCh)

But opinion is changing.

Working with scientists who have radio-collared the Yellowstone wolves

ranchers can now keep track of them

and when they know they are near

shoot not to kill but to scare them away.

(CATTLE LOWING)

The return of the wolf will always be controversial.

But evidence is now emerging

that wolves are far more important than anyone imagined

especially back in the heart of Yellowstone.

It's nearly the end of October.

The cold autumn nights have brought a thin crust of ice to a beaver's pond.

Unlike in the river valleys below

up here there are not many tall cottonwood trees.

So this beaver has built his dam from the shoots of young willows

sprouting all along the side of his pond.

But he is something of a novelty.

Even by the time Yellowstone was made a national park

beavers had been virtually hunted to extinction by fur trappers.

They only began to reappear here in 1 995

the year the wolves came back.

Now wolves are chasing elk again elk have had less time to eat willows

so willows are sprouting everywhere.

Today as winter approaches

all over Yellowstone beavers are using those willows

to put the finishing touches to a dam-building renaissance.

And for every dam there is a new habitat for new life

and a richer more diverse Yellowstone.

(hONKING)

But just as Yellowstone reveals the complexity of life

it also exposes its fragility.

On its lofty ridges

there are signs that all is not well with the whitebark pine.

From above it looks like autumn colours have come to an evergreen world.

But these trees are dying.

Small eruptions of resin dot the trunk of the tree

evidence of an invasion.

Tiny beetles are chewing through the tree's outer defences.

Once inside they lay eggs that turn into larvae that eat the tree.

Each tree that is lost

threatens all the animals that rely on its autumn bounty.

The only thing that can stop the beetles is extreme cold.

But recently the climate here has been getting warmer and warmer.

No national park can protect against that.

This is a tree that needs a cold winter.

It's now November

and the elk have found their feeding grounds just in time

the snows of winter at their heels.

Here they join other herds who come to this place every year

where the snow will be less deep and life a little easier.

But today they graze on an island of grass

surrounded by development.

As they run from the winter

the fate of Yellowstone's animals outside the national park

is decided not by the cold but by people.

(SQUAWKING)

These elk are lucky.

This refuge has been kept aside to give them some degree of sanctuary.

So although the park isn't big enough to protect all its animals all the time

its influence can spread beyond its boundaries

and if even ranchers can come to tolerate wolves

then anything is possible.

In the mountains of Yellowstone

where the elks' bugles signalled the beginning of autumn just two months ago

all seems deserted.

But now the final act of the season is about to take place.

From out of apparently nowhere come the bighorn sheep.

The toughest of all Yellowstone's animals

they can stay here all winter

on slopes and crags that the biting wind keeps clear of snow.

Now they are coming together to rut.

Like elk the males battle for females.

But where elk do their best to avoid fights

bighorn relish them.

A quick test of horn size and of other important bits of anatomy

and the males get straight to the point of sorting out who is toughest.

As the sound of their battles echoes across the Yellowstone wilderness

it marks the end of autumn.

Now the great change is coming again.

Winter is here.

As the snow returns to Yellowstone it seems like the clock is turning back.

All traces of the human world are covered up.

A reminder that when the heart of this great wilderness

was made a national park nearly 1 40 years ago

it was one of the most remote places on Earth.

But as the human world has crept up on Yellowstone

the true value of this remarkable space has become ever clearer.

Though in many ways Yellowstone is not big enough

its influence reaches far beyond its boundaries.

Not just to the land around

but wherever there is a wilderness preserved for its own sake.

Here in the heart of America

the first national park was born.

An idea that has led the way

in redefining our relationship with the wild all over the world.

Some say America's best idea.