Original subtitles

(intense orchestral music)

There are still places so wild and pristine,

many of us dream of experiencing them

just once in our lives.

(intense orchestral music)

Places where national parks

protect and preserve the Earth's rugged beauty.

(intense orchestral music)

140 years ago in Canada's far west,

one of the world's first nature reserves was established.

Today, Banff National Park

is one of the last accessible paradises.

(intense orchestral music)

We will meet people who live and work

in this unique landscape,

who have left everything behind

to be in harmony with nature

and protect it.

(intense orchestral music)

We will spend a whole year with them

and with them we will discover

the adventure of a day-to-day life

visitors to the park never see.

(intense orchestral music)

(calm music)

What a dream.

Experiencing the Canadian winter on snowshoes,

panned with it, a magnificent mountain world

which captivates so many, forever.

On the trail of 19th century pioneers

at a temperature of 30 below,

we trek along Two Jack Lake.

Our guide is a young German woman.

(speaks in foreign language)

My first visit to the Rockies

was an incredible experience.

Nature here is wonderful

and the sheer vastness of the landscape is breathtaking.

Even then I decided

that this is where I would like to live one day.

Hika came here from Thuringia

in Eastern Germany in 2008.

She soon felt totally at home in the mountains around Banff.

What I really love in winter

is that when you're out in nature here, it's so peaceful,

as if everything was sleeping.

There is not a soul to be seen.

You're completely alone.

You can enjoy nature and be in tune with yourself

But is that really possible

in one of the world's most popular national parks

where in winter alone, thousands come

in search of rest and relaxation?

It is indeed.

Thanks to the efforts of the park's rangers.

We've arranged to meet one of them.

(calm music)

Ranger Jesse heads the most exciting

bear projects in the park.

Today he is out and about early with his colleague, Anne

So I think the carcass is just a couple 100 meters along.

Okay.

A few days ago a deer fell through the ice

on the Bow River and drowned.

I'm not seeing ravens.

Soon afterwards, a grizzly set about

his unexpected meal.

The bear is no stranger to Jesse.

10 years ago, he fitted the animal with a transmitter

and gave it the number 122.

When you're dealing with a 350-kilogram male bear,

caution is called for.

We're checking to see if grizzly bear 122 is in the area

before we go and investigate the carcass.

Because the last thing we wanna do

is come upon the carcass

and have a grizzly bear there and defend it.

So, that's dangerous for us

and also dangerous for the bear.

So if we can just ensure and check

to see that he's totally moved out of the area

before we visit the carcass

then it's much safer for us.

The ice might be okay out here,

it's a little bit slushy.

We might be better just right along the edge.

Even though the ice

bore the weight of the bear,

in some places, it is already brittle.

This looks like the bear's tracks right in the snow.

Got windblown.

The bear with number 122

is known to be very aggressive.

So ranger Anne checks to see if it is still in the valley.

So now I'm listening for the radio signal

of grizzly bear 122

which sounds like a beep, beep beep if he's here

but I don't hear him.

(static buzzing)

Let's check in the other direction.

It doesn't sound like he's here today.

Jesse grew up on Canada's west coast.

He studied biology and came to Banff in his early 20s.

There's not many places in the world

where you have as many carnivores like wolverine,

wolves, grizzly bear, lynx,

fox, bobcat that live in this area.

And as a wildlife biologist,

I can't imagine a better place in the world to live.

In the mountains of Canada,

the big thaw in late May is often a huge spectacle.

(lighthearted orchestral music)

To those with a daredevil spirit,

half frozen crystal landscapes

present a sporting challenge

in the form of ice climbing.

On one of the last cold days of winter

here at the Professor Falls on Mount Rundle,

we find two men who love to push themselves to the limit.

(speaks in foreign language)

The kick is the phenomenal view

straight down.

The adrenaline factor is really high

when your life is hanging from a little bit of metal.

Jorg and Geri from Austria

know that they live in a paradise for ice climbers,

one, which is unique worldwide.

Today's climb on falls which are dripping with icy water

is not without its risks.

But the two are determined to reach the top again.

(intense orchestral music)

The reward for their efforts

is an unparalleled view of the Rockies

towering up nearly 4,000 meters.

This is the highest range of mountains

on the North American continent.

(intense orchestral music)

And Banff National Park lies right

in the middle of the Rockies,

covering a good 6,500 square kilometers.

It is not the biggest national park in the world

but it is certainly one of the most legendary.

On the long days in the short spring season,

the park springs into life

and all its inhabitants

enjoy the first warm rays of sunshine.

(intense orchestral music)

Situated on the eastern edge of the national park

is a ranch called Ya Ha Tinda

which in the language of the Stoney Indians

means Mountain Prairie.

For centuries the Stoney and other tribes in the region

came here because here in the foothills of the Rockies

there was always grass for their horses.

A few cowboys still live here,

one of them is nearly two meters tall,

wear size 47 boots, and grew up in Germany.

(calm music)

Holger came here in the service of science

but first he had to learn the lore of the prairie.

I came here with a research assignment

as part of a master's degree.

I found myself catapulted into a landscape

consisting of the ranch,

the prairie, horses, and cowboys.

The first thing I had to do was learn to ride.

The lads here gave me a saddle

that was still available at the ranch.

Unfortunately, I was much too big for it.

So Rob, one of the Cowboys who does leather work,

made me some stirrups, handmade.

They are the only pair of their kind

created for an extra long cowboy.

So now I'm perfectly equipped

and could do my work on horseback.

(speaks in foreign language)

(calm music)

Now in spring, the focus on the farm

is on the foals.

After all, all the horses used by the rangers in the park

are trained here.

That's Rick's job.

He was born on a farm in the Canadian Midwest

and has known the life of a cowboy

ever since he was a child.

(calm music)

When a new guy coming on

and wanting to become a cowboy,

first thing he needs to learn is to keep his mouth shut

and his ears opened.

The big thing about being a cowboy I guess is

having that ability to learn and to listen,

and to help each other out.

Because it's a, you're dependent on the other guy

if you're out there,

whether it's on a pack trip

or gathering horses or gathering cows.

You're depending on the guys around you

so if you don't have their respect and their trust,

then you might as well go find another job.

The work carried out

by wildlife biologist Holger

was commissioned by the University of Alberta.

His research project centers

on the migratory behavior of the wapiti,

also known as elks in North America in Banff National Park.

With the weather getting warmer again

he can now explore the expanses

of the Ya Ha Tinda high plateau

in search of a powerful North American deer.

Holger's wife, Antje, works as a forester on the ranch.

Their children, Maya and Finn, were born in Canada

and are growing up here.

Theirs is a childhood amongst cowboys.

(speaks in foreign language)

The combination of work as a biologist

and life as a cowboy is unbeatable.

Nearly every morning, I wake up and think how lucky I am

to be able to live here and go about my job.

Time and again I catch myself looking around and thinking,

it's so beautiful here.

Actually too beautiful to be true.

(calm music)

The founders of the first parks

in North America wanted to enable people

to experience the beauty of nature

without disturbing it.

But today the animals need more and more protection.

That's park ranger Jesse's job.

(calm music)

In springtime, he's often out and about

very early in the morning and he's not alone.

(calm music)

I grew up in a bush, in the Canada bush

and I always wanted to be a biologist.

And about 20 years ago,

I heard there is some wolf research happening

and grizzly bear research happening

in Banff National Park in the surrounding area,

and I jumped at it

and this is my dream job in my life.

Jesse knows a lot about the wolves and bears

that live in the mountain forests.

On this particular morning,

he's surprised in a clearing by an owl,

normally a shy creature.

(suspenseful music)

That's a great gray owl, a lucky one.

The behavior of the animals tells Jesse

what is happening roundabout.

It seems there's a bear nearby.

In spring, grizzlies awake from their hibernation

and are hungry.

Oh, this grizzly bear's scat's pretty fresh

I would say in the last couple days.

You can see it's been feeding on bearberry,

little berries in there.

Some roots, a little bit of hedysarum roots.

See if I can see anything here.

I don't think it's been feeding on any animals recently.

Yeah, been here recently.

(uplifting orchestral music)

The story of Banff National Park

goes back to the great days of railway construction.

(train whistle hoots)

In 1888, the track reached the land of the Stoney Indians

who used the sulfurous water that bubbled up

in the mountains here to cure disease.

Near Bow Valley, the Indians took three railway workers

to the steaming hot springs which smell strongly of sulfur.

The men suspected that this was a veritable treasure trove.

(uplifting orchestral music)

Railway magnate, William Van Horne,

sensed the best deal of his life,

bringing people from the populated east to the wild west

on his Trans-Canadian trains

to marvel at the stunning world of the mountains.

Around the station at the foot of the sulfur mountain,

a small settlement developed.

It was named Banff,

after the Scottish birthplace of George Stephen,

the president of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

(uplifting orchestral music)

More than 130 years later,

the animals and the town co-exist in harmony.

The gardens of Banff it seems are just as tasty

as the grass of the prairie.

On June 23rd, 1887, Banff National Park was founded.

It was the colony's first tourist resort.

A year later, the majestic Banff Springs opened.

At the time it was the biggest hotel in the world.

We've arranged to meet a woman

who has known the park and the hotel since childhood.

Ralphine Locke experienced the opening up of the mountains

and how the hotel changed the history

of the little settlement.

(lighthearted music)

It's been a tremendous privilege.

I always appreciate it so much

and I was raised with a very keen sense

of the environment and nature,

and I really had a very wonderful life in Banff.

Her grandparents were among the first pioneers.

They became the first European family

to settle in wild Banff.

(calm music)

My family were deeply into nature

and my mother was a great walker.

We'd go off and wander

and we'd rarely see anyone.

That was before the influx after the Second World War.

And at that point, we got a lot of people

from Germany and Switzerland and Italy and so on.

All of a sudden you'd see people and you went off

but for many years we would never see another soul

the whole time we're up here four or five days camping.

Life in this wilderness

wasn't always so romantic.

But the mountains seem to make people happy.

The sheer beauty of the mountains,

they're always changing.

As long as I've been here,

I can see still new features in them.

You know, something the light will change

and it's just a lifelong study really.

Yeah and I've been very fortunate to be part of that.

On the Ya Ha Tinda Ranch,

daily life revolves around the animals.

In early summer, Antje likes to leave the house

while the rest of the family is still sleeping.

She heads for a mountain on the edge of the high plateau

where she and Holger once saw a herd

of wapiti in the early morning.

Holger and Antje met and fell in love

two years before their final school exams.

They attended university together

and even then planned to live in Canada one day.

(lighthearted music)

(speaks in foreign language)

Somehow I always had this dream

of the big wide world.

I wrote in my high school yearbook

that I wanted to become a forester in Canada

and now I'm a biologist in Canada.

I can't imagine anything more wonderful.

This vastness.

You can walk for hours without seeing a single soul,

just the odd deer

or if you're really lucky,

you might spot a bear in the distance.

(calm music)

There is an estimated

60 bears in Banff National Park

but even so, Antje prefers to be alone in the wilderness.

She accepts the risks,

after all she is well-prepared

(speaks in foreign language)

Because there are grizzlies in the area

I always have my bear spray with me.

If a bear approaches you have to wait

until it's close, five to eight meters away,

before you can use the spray.

You flip off the hook and spray cloud in front of the bear

and hope that that puts it off.

It's not 100% certain to deter the animal

but the spray has been proven to be better than nothing.

Luckily I've never been in a situation where I needed it.

Let's hope I never am.

The safest thing is to look out

for any signs and make noise in the forest,

and hope you never come across a bear.

(gun pops)

Once a year, the rangers have to go

for shooting practice.

They must always be prepared

and in an emergency know how to handle their rifle.

Private individuals are forbidden to carry weapons

of any kind in Canada's parks.

Only the rangers are allowed to be armed.

It is important to park staff

for visitors and animals to stay a certain distance apart.

As a rule, this works really well.

It is very rare for a ranger to have to use his weapon.

as shooting instructor Chris Worobets explains.

I mean, still this is the number one tool

that we carry all the time

and firearms are carried for more serious situations.

We have deterrent rounds that we use such as these,

so they're rubber slugs and bean bag rounds.

We use it to inflict pain.

If there say it's a bear

that's staying around a populated area

that's become conditioned to people

and isn't afraid of people,

and it's getting into trouble,

rather than destroying it

we'll try and put in place

first a conditioning plan where we'll go

and use noisemakers and pain stimulus

to convince them that it's uncomfortable to stay there

and to move away to a safe location.

Nature in Canada presents itself

in sumptuous and majestic style

but it is also a habitat for countless animals

that prefer to lead concealed lives.

So it is not always easy to strike the right balance

between the animals inhabitants' need for protection

and the interested gaze of visitors to the park.

(uplifting music)

Ranger Jesse has been studying

the migratory behavior of the park's animals for many years.

Today he has brought us to a special place,

a social tree as it is known.

(uplifting music)

Here animals exchange information

which is almost invisible to the layman.

With a grizzly bear hair here

where they've been just rubbing their backs.

Let's see a little bit further down there, there.

Quite a bit down here,

I wonder if this might be wolf even.

This is a well-used tree by wolves and grizzly bears

and it could be a good spot to put a camera.

Because cameras are his secret informers,

Jesse is going to set up another one here.

A little bit off the trail.

(dramatic music)

Camera traps are triggered by movement.

This spot between the fir trees looks ideal.

So we wanna check it before we go

just to make sure it is actually working.

So you can see it's taking five pictures in a row

which is exactly what we want.

I think we have about 120 cameras.

Every year we collect about 300,000

remote camera images that we classify.

And sometimes it's just blowing grass in the wind

and blowing snow

but other times we get some amazing wildlife shots.

Jesse is particularly taken

by some of the shyest inhabitants of the park.

Although the park is set to contain more than 60 wolves,

visitors rarely spot one.

(calm piano music)

Amazingly, the various species wolves, deers,

even grizzly bears all seem to use the same trails.

These pictures were taken only a few minutes apart.

(calm piano music)

The wild animals and their migratory behavior

are also a topic on the Ya Ha Tinda Ranch

because the last 100 years have seen dramatic changes.

Holger's GPS analysis have shown

that the migratory behavior of the elks has changed.

At one time the deer only spent the winters here.

Now they stay all year round

and destroy the precious grassland.

As yet no one knows why.

For many years now Antje has also

supported the research project.

Together with Holger, she has fitted male and female elk

with transmitter collars

so that their movements can be profiled.

I'm checking whether

any of the wapiti are here in the valley.

Since we're an open country

any signals are received very clearly.

I'm going through the frequencies of the various animals

to see if any of them are in the valley.

If I pick up a signal I can tell

in which direction the deer is located.

In his basement,

the cowboy from Germany has set up a data bank

for evaluating the behavior of wapiti.

The surrounding area is shown on the screen.

Each dot corresponds to a wapiti

with a collar and transmitter.

You can see quite clearly

that in summer, in the 1970s and '80s,

there wasn't a single animal on the ranch.

The elk all spent the summer in the park.

15 years later as the map on the right shows,

there were hardly any elk left in the park in summer.

All the gray dots are gathered around the ranch.

This shows that hundreds of wapiti

have abandoned their migratory behavior

and no longer enter the park at all.

The researchers don't know why this is

but they are determined to try

and get the elks to migrate once again.

As summer makes her presence felt

in the rugged Rocky Mountains,

the first visitors also appear.

The warmer months alone attract

more than 3 million adventurers

and extreme sportsmen and women

because here in the wilderness,

cycling, mountain biking, rafting, climbing,

and virtually every other kind of extreme sport is possible.

(uplifting music)

But reconciling conservation

with people's need for recreation is a balancing act.

Time and again, the question arises

as how many visitors the park can tolerate.

Should numbers be restricted

and indeed is that at all possible?

It's a controversial issue

because visitors are wanted

and not just as a source of income.

The aim for them is to experience the beauty of our world

and realize that it needs their protection.

Rush hour in this conservation paradise

sometimes induces visitors to attempt reckless maneuvers.

Park regulations are designed to enable people

to experience the landscape

without disturbing the animals.

But not everyone sticks to the rules.

Many visitors have no idea

that they can put the animals in a stress situation.

(calm music)

Jesse drives regularly to the park's lookout points

and encounters visitors who have no idea

how they should behave towards the animals.

Excuse me, when you see a bear,

what are you supposed to do?

Say something or do something

or just be quiet? Yeah.

Like I think if you're driving in your vehicle

along Bow Valley Parkway,

just pull over, have nice looks.

It's best and safest to stay in your vehicle

and then after a little while

just move along and give the bear some space.

All right. Yeah.

When people say you fall on the ground

face down, belly down.

No. (chuckles) Don't move.

Is that true? No.

If you're hiking and you surprise a bear,

most bears are just gonna continue doing their own thing

and you just back up and give them space.

Thank you very much. You're welcome.

Thank you. Yeah.

Thanks. All right.

Let's go guys.

Enjoy.

Banff is a fascinating place to work

because we have this interface

between 3 million visitors a year

and these really wary wildlife.

So we spend a lot of time trying to understand

how people affect wildlife

and then what we can do to make Banff a place

where it's a great spot for people to see wildlife

yet provide wildlife with a place to live,

and a place to flourish.

And we've done a lot of work over the years

to try and balance the two.

Being totally alone

yet in the middle of Canada,

that's been life on the Ya Ha Tinda Ranch

for more than a century.

It is hard to imagine that this wilderness

is under serious threat from man himself.

But in Canada too,

oil is a multi-billion dollar business.

Located only 900 kilometers to the north is tar sands,

one of the biggest oil fields on earth.

Test drillings have also been carried out

on the huge ranch

but so far without success.

Thus, the work of people like Holger and Rick

and the future of the ranch

with its rich tradition looks threatened.

Today, the two are rounding up the young horses.

Here you have to learn to adapt to nature.

"On the ranch," Holger says, "clocks tick differently."

(speaks in foreign language)

When you're new here

you do everything twice as fast as the cowboys.

In the end, though,

you are forced into this lifestyle and you slow down.

And there is sense in that

because horses can't take stress

and they are what you are working with.

If you make swift movements around horses they become edgy.

You need to do everything calmly

then you will find that the horses

are far more relaxed and compliant.

Rick always has an eye

on how each horse is developing.

After all, from next year on these still untamed youngsters

will have to become the ranger's best friends.

The horses are only gradually

brought into contact with humans.

His experience tells Rick whether or not

a horse has character.

Well, these horses, they're just special animals.

They become friends and you know them rest of year.

Each one of them has quite a strong personality.

You get a real bond built with them

and when they trust you like this

and you can do whatever you like to do with them.

It's kind of a nice feeling.

Come to work in the morning and your colleagues like you,

it's a good thing.

(uptempo music)

The same thing applies

to dealing with people here.

The lad from Germany had to slowly earn

the recognition of the ranch cowboys.

He has fond memories of the time.

(speaks in foreign language)

You're not allowed to buy

your first hat yourself.

It has to be approved or given to you.

I was lucky enough to have my first hat presented to me

but just to do everything right,

one evening I went to all the cowboys on the ranch

and asked if the hat was acceptable

and whether it was okay for me to wear it.

Fortunately they all said yes

and added that I was well on the way to becoming

a halfway useful cowboy.

So the hat was now appropriate.

(speaks in foreign language)

(calm music)

Ranger Jesse is on the way to the camera trap

He set up a few weeks ago.

He can't wait to find out

what's been going on at the social tree.

(calm music)

It feels kind of like Christmas

when we service these cameras

'cause you don't know what's on there

and it's always a surprise.

Sometimes you don't get much

and sometimes you get some amazing photos.

Gonna pull this memory card out and pop a new one in.

(calm music)

The pictures exceed all expectations.

(calm music)

Grizzly bear is coming along

and they rub on it.

I think it feels good.

They can rub some of their fur off

but it's also a communication tree.

So, that's how the bears that are rolling through the area

know who is here,

how long ago,

probably what they're eating.

And at the same time it's communication tree

for other wildlife.

We saw the wolf go through

and it checked out the tree

to see if other bears have been here.

We had some deer and elk go through

and they were smelling.

And these three, mother grizzly bears with offspring,

which is great for this area.

(calm music)

In autumn, Banff National Park

is simply radiant.

(wolf howls)

(uplifting orchestral music)

For Ralphine Locke, this is the most beautiful time of year.

We've come to meet her at Green Spot,

a lookout point high above Banff.

As a little girl, she spent unforgettable afternoons

on this popular picnic site with her grandparents.

When I look down over the valley here

it makes me think about my grandfather

who was here before the railway.

And he camped once in 1881 on the Bow River

and he always used to tell us about

what a wonder tour it was just to see the animals.

I was quite close to my grandfather

so it was good to hear those firsthand things.

Ralphine has passed on her love of nature

to her son, Harvey.

(uplifting orchestral music)

Harvey Locke is an internationally renowned

advocate of national parks.

A visionary who thinks along global lines.

He still retains close ties with his home region.

Banff is an extraordinarily wonderful place.

Over the hill there behind, in front of me,

my wife and I went for a nine-day walk this summer

and saw only one other group of hikers in nine days.

We were drinking from the streams.

It's an incredibly wonderful wilderness place,

one of the great places on earth for a wild nature.

Harvey Locke is fighting

for the global interlinking of national parks.

Because only if the parks work together

will animals on all five continents

be able to move freely.

We need to think about how this park

connects to other parks

and how that whole landscape hangs together

because that's actually the scale at which nature works.

And that led to an idea called nature needs half

which is the idea of taking this

Yellowstone to Yukon idea global.

We should protect at least half the world

in an interconnected way, land and sea.

And so, I spend time on that

and I believe that that's really important to us

getting our relationship with nature

right in the 21st century.

It's an Indian summer on the Ya Ha Tinda Ranch.

Once again, the ranch and its special grassland

will again become the habitat for many wild animals.

The wapiti have returned with their young

and will spend the winter here.

(uplifting orchestral music)

One highlight in autumn

is the arrival of foals at the ranch.

Over a period of five years,

they will be trained as horses for the rangers.

(uplifting orchestral music)

(speaks in foreign language)

Yesterday Rick, the rangers' manager,

returned from a big auction with 12 one-year-olds,

and of course it's really exciting

and another sign that the year is coming to an end.

After all you only get foals once a year.

Every ranger who ventures out

into the wilderness on horseback

has to be certain that his mount is reliable.

And that is definitely not something

to be taken for granted.

These are all brand new colts,

they're colts that were just weaned from their mothers

about two weeks ago.

So they're pretty worried about everything.

They're wondering where their family went

and what happened to the world as they were used to it.

With us here now we won't actually start riding these colts

for another two years, three years.

We'll feed them.

We'll look after them, we'll trim their feet.

We'll halter break them.

We'll warm them.

We'll do things like this.

Things just to work with them day by day

so they get used to people being around them.

For Holger and Antje,

respect in dealing with animals

and with nature is essential.

Here in the Canadian wilderness,

that is something they can teach their children.

Time and again, we meet people in the park

who have devoted their life to conservation.

People like Jesse, of course.

He has studied the animals all summer long.

Now he is evaluating his pictures.

Over the last few months,

his camera has taken more than a thousand photographs,

including some of bear 122.

Grizzly bear 122 is a pretty neat bear.

He is probably the biggest grizzly bear in the Bow Valley.

And this summer he killed a sheep,

another black bear, an elk,

and I think the other animals give him space. (chuckles)

Grizzly 122 is notorious in Banff

and regularly hits the headlines

when he's spotted near the little town.

The GPS transmitter tells Jesse

that the bear covers more than 50 kilometers everyday.

These animals travel a lot.

(chuckles) They travel far

and this particular bear especially

cross the Trans-Canada highway a lot of times,

over 66 times.

Regulating the balance

between people and nature in the park remains a challenge,

after all two railway lines and the Trans-Canadian highway

run right through it.

Roads often prove deadly traps for animals.

For years, Harvey Locke has been fighting

to have the problem addressed.

Now in Banff, underpasses and overpasses for the animals

have been built at great cost.

They are an attempt to make a park

that is intersected by traffic arteries

safer for all the animals.

Harvey and Jesse see this as only the beginning.

To do justice to the animals in their habitat

they say far larger areas need to be protected

because it takes a while for animals to get used

to the crossovers created for them

For the first five years,

we had deer use it a lot, elk use it a lot.

Wolves started to learn to use it

but we really didn't have many grizzly bears use it.

But it's interesting, over time,

these grizzly bears slowly started to increase

their use of these overpasses.

They became familiar with them

and it became more natural as vegetation

grew up on these things.

It's reduced our mortality rates by well over 90%

and animals can cross safely.

Today many countries have built

over and underpass is based on the Banff model,

including Germany,

but there still aren't enough.

My vision is that this become normal

for every highway in North America

that goes through wildlife habitat.

That overpasses and underpasses become a normal part

of how we build roads in this continent

and in Europe and in the rest of the world.

And it's a question of how we wanna live

as humans in the landscape.

And Banff Park has turned out to be the place

that people from all over the world come to study

how these overpasses and underpasses

and fencing work together.

On the ranch it's almost time to say goodbye.

Holger and his family are leaving Ya Ha Tinda

because their children now need to go to school.

(calm music)

Perfect!

(calm music)

The Bohms are bidding farewell

to the wilderness and moving to the oil city of Edmonton.

(speaks in foreign language)

When we move to the city

it will be the end not only of the summer

but also of our entire life on the ranch.

That's sad because up until now

the children have been able to roam free

and do what they wanted.

Now though school life beckons,

little Finny will start in grade one.

It's a pity but on the other hand, it's also exciting.

(laughs)

♪ And there'll peace in the valley ♪

♪ For me someday ♪

♪ There'll be peace ♪

Antje and Holger will come back though

to a place where they have forged lifelong friendships.

♪ There'll be no sorrow, no sadness ♪

♪ No trouble I see ♪

♪ There'll be peace in the valley for me ♪

As the temperature drops,

the bears gradually begin to hibernate,

the wolves withdraw,

and the park offers new opportunities.

This still fairly new winter sports region

now attract skiers and snowboarders.

(intense orchestral music)

We have spent a year in this incredible place,

in Banff National Park.

(intense orchestral music)

Today, 13% of the earth surface is protected.

Perhaps nature needs even more space

if we are to live in balance with her once again.

(intense orchestral music)

We will never forget the people we have got to know

over the last 12 months.

With their love of their park,

their wishes, their concerns,

and their visions.

The world is becoming a busier and busier place

and wildlife clearly need some protected areas

to survive and persist.

So, what we need is support from people

to provide places for wildlife.

(intense orchestral music)

(speaks in foreign language)

Oil is always a major issue in Canada

and if oil were discovered here,

it would be very hard to preserve the ranch the way it is,

that's the danger.

(intense orchestral music)

Challenges, definitely challenges.

But we seem to meet them and overcome most of them.

Keep them balanced.

And it's still a lovely place to live.

(intense orchestral music)

What I've come to believe is that

this kind of an intact system of landscape

where humans live with nature

should be the new normal for the 21st century.

(intense orchestral music)