Original subtitles

(orchestral music)

In the far west of North America,

deep in the Rocky Mountains is a majestic pristine landscape

with an illustrious name, the Crown of the Continent.

(orchestral music)

Two countries, Canada and the United States

protect the heart of this spectacular wilderness,

the world's first International Peace Park.

(orchestral music)

It's a sanctuary in the middle of a landscape

full of tempting natural resources,

a brave team, now plan to extend this national park

in order to save it.

Protecting this, which we should do

for many many reasons, just makes sense.

(orchestral music)

An expedition into an ecosystem

that is unique worldwide.

We need areas where we work hard

to ensure that species persist into the future.

These are the people who have devoted their lives to nature.

I won't be content until I see this missing piece

of Waterton Glacier International Peace Park added.

(orchestral music)

A year in the wilderness

made us see life on our planet through different eyes.

(orchestral music ending)

(upbeat music starting)

At a bitterly cold -15 degrees,

we enter a rugged wilderness.

The area north of the National Park is isolated

and an ideal refuge for many wild animals

including the particularly shy wolverine.

Now in winter, the animals ought to be coming out

of their hiding places to feed.

Two highly specialized biologists,

Mirjam Barrueto from Switzerland,

and her Canadian colleague, Tony Clevenger

want to find out if wolverines permanently live here

outside the National Park.

And if so, how many?

It's an excursion into a unique ecosystem.

The Crown of the Continent, as it is known

deep in the Rocky Mountains, covers an area

of 43,000 square kilometers,

making it almost the size of Denmark.

(bright orchestral music)

The heart of this biologically diverse region is protected.

The American Glacier National Park

and the Canadian Waterton Lakes Park were merged

to create an almost 4,600 square kilometer large sanctuary

that is home to more than 70 species of mammal,

and some 250 species of bird.

Nearly 1,200 plant species have also been identified here.

Mirjam and Tony have set up fur traps

to find out just how many wolverine live north of the park.

Looks like wolverine hair,

a nice guard hairs. That one could be.

Really dark. Huh.

Black, brown, yeah this is great.

This is, we've never had a wolverine at this site.

This is a, we had one down the road

about 10 or 12 kilometers

and -- Oh, cool.

Yeah, no, this is what we really need.

This is the genetic data for wolverines in the area.

So this is fantastic, this is great.

(calm music)

The presence of wolverines

indicates that the ecosystem is intact.

These mountain-like predators need large pristine habitats.

In winter, their ability to approach their prey

almost silently without sinking into the snow

makes them superior to large mammals.

Their preferred diet consists of snow hares,

mice, and squirrels.

To attract wolverines, Mirjam and Tony have attached

frozen beavers, three meters above the ground.

The tufts of wolverine fur are like an identity card.

Back in the laboratory,

the hair roots will provide sufficient DNA material

to enable the researchers to determine for the first time,

how many wolverines live in the area

and how healthy they are.

Sample number one.

More than 10 hairs, on the loop.

The opportunities here are so exciting,

where else in the world could you work with wolverines,

and be one of the first to answer certain questions?

According to the scientists' calculations,

this area is an adequate habitat for around 90 wolverines.

This area here really is the missing piece to the puzzle.

We know a lot about wolverines in Banff,

and your whole National Park to the north.

We know a lot about wolverines

in the Glacier National Park where they've studied them

for 10 years, Waterton as well,

but it's this matrix in the middle,

this is really the missing piece of the puzzle,

and this is what we've been focusing our survey,

our research, learning about wolverines

in this really unknown habitat.

Up to now, wolverines have only been studied

inside national parks.

Over the next few months,

camera tracks will record how the animals live here

in the unexplored wilderness.

This isolated natural paradise has become

the most strongly contested region of North America.

Naturalists like Mirjam and Tony

urgently want to see it integrated

into the protection of the peace park.

But industry and lobby associations are striving

for access to its mineral resources,

its timber and its hunting grounds.

(calm rock music)

Large interconnected sanctuaries

are also something the Blackfeet Nation dreams of.

Because then their herds of bison could roam

as freely as they did 150 years ago.

The Blackfeet Indian Reservation

on the plains of Montana borders on the eastern edge

of the park.

In 2014, in Browning, in Blackfeet Territory,

the tribes of North America signed the Buffalo Treaty.

It enabled them to re-establish herds of free-roaming bison

on their land.

Today, the Blackfeet are going to move one of their herds.

Sheldon Carlson is in charge of the operation.

We'll take them across the highway there,

so, we'll wait around for Fish and Game to get here,

and then we'll do all kind of like a little talk,

to make sure everybody's all on the same page,

and then we'll be good.

The men are proud of their herds

which are growing quickly.

When Europeans settled on the plains,

they virtually wiped out the bison,

threatening the existence of the tribe itself.

Harry Barnes is a former Chairman

of the Blackfeet Business Council.

We've been Buffalo people

for thousands and thousands of years.

I mean, we were, we sustained ourselves on the buffalo,

food, clothing, and shelter,

and that became an integral part of our spirituality.

By the whole blessing of the whole herd,

my family's healthy, all my friends are healthy,

and everybody's healthy because of the spirit

that the buffalo has,

that's the way I look at a lot of things with animals,

and they're a strong animal.

So that's why I'd do anything just to make their life

comfortable as best I can.

(calm music)

The tribes of the North have a visionary goal,

together with the National Park activists,

they want to create interlinked habitats

in which animals can roam freely,

from Yellowstone National Park in Montana

to Banff in the Canadian Rockies,

and further north into the Yukon.

(uplifting music)

A dozen men and women on horses and quad bikes

are needed to keep the 600 bison together,

and drive them safely across the highway.

(uplifting music)

Indigenous people were already driving and hunting buffalo

in this region 6,000 years ago,

the culture of the Blackfeet is legendary.

(uplifting music)

When the tribes drive their animals today,

they are also building up the youngest members of the tribe

for a future in which they can feel confident.

It's a good experience for little guys like Landon

and the other kids that's riding, but they don't know,

but still they stay out here and they help.

In the future, they might be a lot of help,

because now they see the drive line,

wherever we go every year,

whenever we come back every year.

So in the future,

I don't, probably won't even have to be way back there,

because these little guys remember.

Like buffalo, they remember their migrating path.

The return of the wild bison is designed

to restore a balance that has almost been lost,

stabilize the ecosystem,

and secure the diversity of its species.

Back in 1992, the International Conference of Biodiversity

which was held in Rio de Janeiro

agreed that more areas of land and sea needed protecting.

By 2020, each signature nation had to place

17% of its land area under protection.

By 2018, the figure for Canada stood at 12%.

The contested region in the northwest of the Peace Park

would bring Canada closer to its final goal.

The area also includes the Flathead River,

a 400-kilometer-long lifeline for the entire region.

The river is currently part of a protection program.

In March, as soon as the Flathead is free of ice,

ecology professor Richard Hauer begins his research again.

(calm music)

With his young research team,

he wants to assess how the Flathead has survived the winter.

He is concerned that the river is getting steadily warmer.

Over the last 16 years alone,

the average temperature of the water

has risen by some four degrees,

and in the absence of major snowfalls,

the volume of meltwater from the mountains is diminishing.

So the water level is dropping.

Richard Hauer's interest is focused on the tiniest creatures

in the river,

because they are a good indicator of the state it is in.

Life in wild places like this,

it's just amazing how much biodiversity there is.

This is truly like a jackpot rock.

This is just loaded with different kinds of aquatic insects.

Despite the rise in the temperature

of the water, he still finds a wide range of microorganisms.

To ensure that young people understand

the delicate balance of nature,

most universities in the United States

require their first semester students to register

for an environmental practical course.

19-year-old economic student Ingrid DeGroote

has been working with Richard Hauer for several weeks now,

and would like to do more in this field.

If we exploit our resources to extinction,

we have no way to survive.

Nothing does.

And aside from the fact that they're beautiful

and extraordinary in their own way is,

we, as humans are or any other animal

has no chance of survival or of really enjoying the world,

if we don't have places that are set apart.

The Flathead is one of the most closely studied

gravel bed rivers on Earth.

Since its course has never been regulated,

researchers see it as the original river per se,

wild and unrestricted, eventually it flows

into Flathead Lake,

but the integrity of the river is threatened.

Energy concerns have their sights set

on its headwater region.

This river has a couple of places

where they've been identified as having opportunities

to put in two, 300 meter high dams are proposed.

I hope that that never takes place,

but the geology is something that could be permitted.

You could have, you could build a huge dam here,

and basically flood this whole river,

and this whole thing could be, you know,

a big nasty reservoir.

Richard Hauer is also fighting

to see the Peace Park extended.

This would put the headwaters of the Flathead

inside the park's boundaries,

and thus make the region untouchable.

Located on the North Fork River,

a tributary of the Flathead is the tiny settlement

of Pole Bridge with one shop,

two farms and a handful of inhabitants.

This is a remote place of longing

in the Rocky Mountains for Europeans too.

(western music)

Oliver Meister grew up in Switzerland.

For almost 18 years,

he has run a small isolated hostel near Pole Bridge.

(western music)

Oliver first came here some 25 or 30 years ago.

A qualified toolmaker,

he had actually planned to immigrate to South America.

The Rocky Mountains were on his way there.

And this is where he stayed.

When I head into the mountains,

I rarely see a single house.

There's the road, but that's all.

Nature here is relatively untouched.

Then there are all the wild animals I come across.

I once saw a grizzly bear swimming across the river,

and over there I spotted a wolf.

It's always so quiet here.

That's what I like about the place.

When the river freezes over,

you don't even hear the water anymore.

There's just silence.

(western music)

But when things get too quiet,

Oliver climbs into his old pickup,

and drives into the village.

Just 15 people live scattered in and around Pole Bridge.

The first settlers here were fur traders,

and they only arrived in the late 19th century.

(truck whirring)

The main center for local gossip

is the mercantile.

It opened in 1914, four years

after the Glacier National Park was founded.

(western music)

Catarina from the Czech Republic,

and her Canadian husband are now trying to breathe new life

into the small store.

So this bar, it's just oats and peanut butter.

Oat and peanut butter. Yeah.

And this is just some honey, dry fruit, and bananas there,

and rice flour, so it's absolutely --

Perfect, I can do that.

Yeah. I love it.

(western music)

When Oliver spent his first night

in this hostel in the wilderness,

it was still owned by an old American.

Oliver worked for him for a few summers,

then in 2002, he emigrated for good,

and took over the place.

You always have to make sure you've got everything

you might need,

living up here is certainly a lot of work.

Just being here,

I always say, is almost a full-time job.

(speaking foreign language) full-time job.

But it is enjoyable, and anyway,

everyone needs something to do.

In my case, I never know where the work stops

and the enjoyment begins.

I just love it here.

(calm music)

(speaking foreign language)

The story of the Peace Park goes back to 1895,

the year the Waterton Lakes Park was established in Canada.

1910 saw the opening of the Glacier National Park

in the United States, thanks partly to pressure

from Californian naturalist, John Muir.

Soon, Rotarians in Montana were striving

for a park merger with the Canadians,

and in 1932, the governments in Washington DC

and Ottawa created the world's first cross-border peace park

between two nations.

Since then, nearly 170 nature reserves

have followed their example,

but the pioneer of the movement is now threatened.

(calm music)

Highway number three in May,

the road borders on the sought-after land,

which conservationists want to integrate

into the Peace Park.

(calm music)

One of them is Harvey Locke,

a lawyer from Banff in Canada,

and an internationally renowned advocate

of the concept of interlinked national parks.

(calm music)

He is concerned of the highway's destructive impact

on the Peace Park.

This is the critical corridor for North American

large carnivores to pass through, right where we are.

And if it gets broken because there's too much traffic,

or too many housing projects get built along it,

then Waterton Glacier will become an island,

separated from the great reservoir of life

that goes to the north.

(trucks whirring)

The National Park activists

were able to convince UNESCO

to examine the importance of this unprotected region.

Consequently, in 2010, the oil, gas and coal industries

were all barred from it.

(train whirring)

(dramatic music)

But a lot more has to happen,

because timber companies have focused on the area.

Its lodge pole pines grow extremely straight,

and are thus very much in demand.

The aisles that are cut through the forest

attract off-road vehicles,

which, then, cause further destruction,

and there is no restriction on hunting.

(dramatic music)

(gunshot)

(rock music beginning)

Located in Fernie, which lies directly on highway three

is the headquarters of the oldest fishing and hunting club

in British Columbia.

Its members love the wilderness,

because of the diversity of its wildlife.

(rock music)

Long-term club member and its former President, Mario Rocca,

is radically opposed to the Peace Park being extended.

He and his people insist on their right to hunt

and to uphold tradition.

Some people live hockey,

some people live golf and other activities,

my grandfather was a hunter.

My dad was a hunter, we're hunters of our family,

and my sons are both hunters.

And for us it's the way of life.

It's part of life.

And if I didn't hunt, like,

I don't know what I would do with myself.

(rock music)

Mario Rocca and his fellow club members

believe that systematic hunting is the best way

of controlling the animal population.

(rock music)

That is a wolf.

They're common throughout most of British Columbia.

And they're really hard animal to hunt,

because they're very very elusive.

This here, there's an all white sheep,

these are called Dall sheep.

There's a very few in the Northwest corner

of British Columbia,

they're basically in Alaska, and the Yukon,

and Northwest Territories, but we do have some in BC,

these white fellows here, still there,

the Rocky Mountain goats,

and last but not least my corner of my office here,

where I do all my bullet stuff,

this fellow here is a grizzly bear.

I had to shoot fast and straight,

but as you can see the bear come on second best.

And he's on the wall,

and to me, it's a beautiful trophy,

it's a once in a lifetime trophy.

(rock music)

For men like Mario Rocca,

an extended national park is a government concept.

But the government is a long way off,

and they say has no idea of the lives people here lead.

They want to hunt just like they have always done.

We are dead set against it.

We don't need it.

The land is there for everyone to use,

to make a living off the land,

to mine it, to log it.

So you tie up a huge chunk of line

from the Yukon to Yellowstone,

I don't think that would be good for the economy

of British Columbia, to tell you the truth.

That's my own personal opinion.

(calm music)

In the Peace Park, they take a different view.

Here, species' diversity is the most precious asset of all.

Now in May, an extraordinary project

is about to be launched.

Biologists want to restore the original ecosystem.

The Peace Park is unique.

Even after 1492 when Europeans began to change

the face of North America,

following the discovery of the new world

by Christopher Columbus,

hardly any species of plant or animal became extinct.

The near extinction of the buffalo

has brought worldwide condemnation.

But far fewer people are prepared to stand up

for a tiny species, which has a huge impact.

The northern leopard frog.

(inspiring music)

Kimberly Pearson, the park's Head Biologist

now wants to reintroduce the species.

A few weeks ago, she received frog spawn

from the park in Saskatchewan,

and today the tadpoles are going to be released.

It is an important moment.

Yes, it is very important for these frogs and for the park.

And it'll be up to them to grow

big and strong over the next few months,

and metamorphose, change into frogs,

and hopefully come back here in a couple of springs

to lay eggs themselves,

and keep the species going here.

If you look closely at them, they're quite dark,

dark brown with gold speckling on them.

In we go, little froggies.

The little amphibians play an important role

as a food source for fish, snakes, and birds.

They, in turn, are prey for predators

like coyotes, wolves and bears.

(upbeat music)

The National Park biologists have already been successful

in reintroducing bison here.

The first animals were brought here

from Yellowstone National Park in 1952.

Today, the small herd consists of just 13 buffalo.

(upbeat music)

Not very long ago,

the plains bison roamed this landscape in the millions

and millions, and was the most numerous large mammal

in Western North America.

So this land in many ways with those animals here was shaped

by bison and all the animals that followed the bison.

In the restricted habitat of the National Park,

the bison don't find everything they need,

so Kim and Dan help out.

I don't wanna put this too close to the road but, here.

We don't have any natural mineral licks

that would be available to bison and wildlife

in a normal situation,

so this adds to their nutrition and their wellbeing.

And we put out three of these stones every couple of months

just for the summer months.

(calm music)

National parks play an important role

in the history of the bison.

The first buffalo came from North America

across the Bering Strait

about half a million years ago,

and spread even to the far south of the continent.

Around 1492, its 6 million original inhabitants

lived in harmony with some 25 buffalo.

Later, the Europeans arrived,

and hunted the buffalo mercilessly.

By the late 19th century,

more than a million buffalo hides were

being exported every year.

Only 23 animals survived in Yellowstone National park,

partly because the army protected them from hunters.

Today, more than five and a half thousand bison

graze in Yellowstone, roaming wild and free, once again.

They form the basis for new herds

in national parks where protected, they can reproduce.

Once again, the plains of the north are home

to some 30,000 wild bison.

(calm music)

Every year, the park attracts

around two and a half million visitors,

most of whom come in high summer.

At this time of year adventurers

from all over the world also make their way to Pole Bridge.

(calm music)

Then, Oliver Meister's hostel does good business.

(calm music)

Dean Patton is a regular guest.

This is his last day,

and he's leaving Oliver some provisions.

(calm music)

(background chatter)

The hiker biker box,

I call this the hiker biker box.

As it says here, it's a free box for people

who come here with a rucksack or bike,

and haven't perhaps got enough food with them.

They can help themselves

from what others have left behind, like peanut butter,

and instant coffee, and things like that.

(speaking foreign language)

Dean wants his grandson Miles to eat something,

before they leave.

Do you like peaches Miles? Yep.

How much do you want?

A half. You want a half, okay.

No, the whole thing. The whole thing?

Forget it, I'm gonna eat half of it.

Nine-year-old Miles from Seattle

loves coming to Oliver's hostel.

This is his third trip.

And out in the wild,

you get to go rafting and see deer and bear.

Well, we were going rafting on a big river,

and we're going pretty fast,

and then there was a bear up on the land

and I thought it'd come in,

and try to eat a fish and see us and eat us too.

(tea kettle whistling)

Miles is accompanied by his grandfather,

and Dean's friend, Rick, a retired surgeon.

Granddad Dean has been coming here for nearly 25 years.

There's almost no internet here.

And so you don't, you don't get to spend time

checking your emails.

You just get to be, you get to read, you get to see,

I come here and I sleep 10 hours a day,

and I get up and I make breakfast and then I do nothing.

Or maybe I'll go out in the woods or float the river.

But it's, time slows down.

It's so different from being

in the rest of the United States.

where everybody's in a hurry,

here, there's no reason to hurry to be anywhere,

'cause you're already there.

It's good for your soul to have a place

where there isn't any commerce,

sit in the banks of a river,

and watch it go by, like Mark Twain.

There's not much left of the American West,

but there's this, and it's wonderful and beautiful,

and it's good for your, it's good for the way you think.

(calm music)

Hey bear, are you out there?

Don' come and eat me!

(calm music)

You never know who you're going to encounter

on the path down to the river.

(calm music)

This is such a great place.

I don't wanna leave.

Yeah, me either.

But I'll be back. Next year.

(calm music)

John Muir who founded the National Park

was well aware of the healing effect of the wilderness.

"I am well again, I came to life in the cool winds

"and crystal waters of the mountains."

(calm music)

In August, in the west of the Park,

the battle for the new sanctuary continues.

River expert Richard Hauer needs an up-to-date picture.

Are there any illegal construction sites

close to the Flathead River?

Can any pollution be seen entering the river

from outside the park?

And now in summer, how high is the water level?

(western music)

The river and how it works actually is

at a much, much larger scale.

It's at a scale you literally cannot see

from the ground as you're walking around

or driving around in the valley,

you have to get up in the air

to actually see what the river has done in the past

and is going to be doing in the future.

(western music)

Every year, the river cuts its way through

the valley anew.

Its course is constantly changing.

In this way, the ecosystem of the gravel bed floodplain

remains in balance.

The alternation between drying up and flooding

ensures constant regeneration.

Not only is it full of high diversity of aquatic life,

but also the terrestrial life,

the birds, the elk, moose, wolves,

grizzly bears, mountain lions,

they're all using the river, the river corridor,

and for essential parts of their life histories.

(western music)

Richard Hauer is approaching

the most sensitive part of the river,

its headwaters in the unprotected area.

He believes it's vital for the park to be extended.

The quality of water that's in the river

is directly proportional to the amount of land

that has been protected as well.

So the water's coming off in the landscape

and going into the river,

protecting this, which we should do for many, many reasons,

it's not just for the river,

adding to Glacier in Waterton just makes sense.

So protecting the river

would also mean stabilizing the park itself for the future.

(calm music)

Over the last few months,

Harvey Locke has been preparing an expedition

to the contested area.

Together with a small group,

he plans to climb a mountain ridge

where so far very few have set foot.

It's a fresh August day at Lineham Creek.

(calm music)

The group gathered yesterday at base camp

at an altitude of 1,800 meters.

Good morning everyone. Hey, very good.

It's gonna be a nice day.

The group is comprised of students, biologists,

and journalists from all over Canada.

They want to get to know the wilderness,

which is to be integrated into the Peace Park.

(calm music)

Do you want coffee? (laughter)

(quiet background chatter)

(calm music)

Let's do it guys.

Let's get organized.

The plan is to climb another 300 meters

to 2,100 meters, tracking past crystal clear lakes,

and jagged peaks whose snow covered points

gave the Crown of the Continent its name.

The National Park activists are convinced

that anyone who has followed the call of this wilderness

will want to protect more of it.

(calm music)

After two hours,

the group has reached a steep mountain meadow.

The slope here is a wonderful example

of why Waterton Glacier and the Flathead

are very very biodiverse from a stemmed plant point of view.

The reason for that is

plants from Southern Rockies of the United States

get this far north, plants from the archaic boreal system

come down the Canadian Rockies this far south,

prairie plants, because the mountains are so thin here

come this far east,

and the Pacific Northwest plants get this far west

because there's no high mountains in between them.

And you can see many plant species here.

This is an Indian paintbrush.

This red one.

This is, would forget me not or a stick seed.

This is a ragwort.

Look up the slope,

you suddenly see mer grass,

which is that tall white blossom,

that does not occur north of the Flathead Valley.

(calm music)

The group then reached Triple Divide Peak,

2,446 meters high.

It is a watershed that feeds three oceans.

Firstly, via the Missouri-Mississippi River System

that empties into the Gulf of Mexico,

the Saskatchewan River takes water

from the mountain to the Arctic Ocean.

Thirdly, the Columbia River,

which is also fed from the mountain,

flows into the Pacific Ocean.

In 1855, Noah Seattle,

the Chief of the Suquamish Tribe

warned, "What is man without the animals?

"If all the beasts were gone,

"men would die from a great loneliness of spirit

"for whatever happens to the beasts,

"soon happens to man.

"All things are connected."

(calm music)

On this particular day in late August,

in the middle of the Canadian part of the National Park,

Kimberly Pearson is excited.

If we find frogs today, it will mean

that our effort has been successful in that

we've put eggs and tadpoles into a pond

that they've been able to grow in,

and grow successfully and metamorphose into baby frogs.

I am excited about this, yes. (chuckles)

Kim had released the tadpoles in a marshy area,

five kilometers away,

but how many frogs have made it this far?

There's one right here.

I see a leopard frog.

Yes, success. (laughs)

Yes.

There's one little leopard frog to tell us

that our effort has been successful

and there are likely others along this shoreline.

We could look for them as well, and get an idea

of approximately how many may have come out of the pond.

(calm music)

It's an important success for Kim.

She has managed to reintroduce the leopard frog

into the National Park and restore a missing building block

into the biological cycle here.

(calm music)

Oh, he's in there.

He's in the net.

Oh, what a beautiful frog.

Nice white stripes along his back.

The dark leopard spots with light halos around them.

He just looks like a healthy little frog.

Kim hopes that many of her little amphibians

will survive the next two years,

because only then will they be mature enough to lay eggs

and truly guarantee the survival of their species.

The frogs are threatened by lots of predators,

like the bald eagles,

the Waterton Glacier Peace Park offers the species

a safe retreat for breeding.

In the 1960s, when the population of America's national bird

was seriously endangered,

bald eagle survived mainly under the protection

of the National Park.

(uplifting music)

(bright orchestral music beginning)

The expedition team has almost reached its goal.

(bright orchestral music)

The group has been climbing through brush

for nearly four hours.

Now they've reached the summit.

(bright orchestral music)

The area that we're looking at here

is the area that we propose adding

to fill in the missing piece

of Waterton Glacier International Peace Park.

It extends for 45,000 hectares across this landscape

that way, all the way down to the main stem

of the Flathead river.

(calm music)

It's a sublime moment.

No one even dares think about what industry would do

to this landscape.

(calm music)

These rocks are so old and this landscape has evolved

over such a long period of time,

and it's been, you know, this beautiful wilderness area,

and it's just something really special

that I never got to experience until I was much older.

Oh, it makes me really embarrassed.

Thinking about the province of British Columbia.

I'm from Victoria where the legislative assembly sits,

and I think the biggest problem is a lack of political will

and a lack of political leadership.

(calm music)

The group agree that politicians

and decision-makers should also come here

and experience this wilderness.

(calm music)

Two days out here,

and you see the world through different eyes.

(calm music)

For Harvey Locke who grew up in Banff National Park,

it's also a matter of respect.

I particularly like being out in the landscape

where I am not the dominant animal.

I like being in places where things could eat me.

With grizzly bears, lions, tigers, those sorts of things

draw me because they make me humble.

And they remind me that despite our conceits as humans,

that we really are just one species among many,

and we need to share the world with the rest of life.

It's a nice fire.

Back at base camp,

the team are planning their next steps.

Publishing newspaper articles and photographs,

sending petitions to Ottawa and Victoria,

and motivating politicians to see for themselves and act.

(calm music)

October in Kenmore, north of the Peace Park.

This is where the biologists have their headquarters.

Mirjam Barrueto is now analyzing the information

she obtained in the laboratory

from the samples of wolverine fur.

The camera traps have also yielded a lot of pictures.

(upbeat music)

But the results give cause for concern,

and Mirjam believes she has identified the problem.

(upbeat music)

(speaking foreign language)

There is a massive amount of lumbering activity

in this area of the Rocky Mountains, especially in winter.

So roads are plowed deep into the mountains.

And as soon as roads are open,

fur trappers have easier access,

along with all kinds of other people with their snowmobiles

and other machines,

and wolverines are fairly sensitive to disturbance.

(speaking foreign language)

The biologists have found far less evidence

of the presence of wolverines than they had expected.

Their study was pioneer work.

They set up 162 camera and fur traps.

One third of all the cameras yielded photographs

and the team collected nearly 2,000 fur samples.

The study showed that wolverines do indeed exist

outside the Peace Park,

but instead of an unexpected 90 animals,

they found evidence of no more than 15.

(speaking foreign language)

Large interlinked areas are needed,

especially for wolverines, which need a lot of space.

But Waterton Park and the new Flathead Park,

which hopefully will become a reality one day,

are vital core centers,

from which all the various animals and plants

will be able to spread out again.

(speaking foreign language)

And we hope we conquer areas they have lost.

(speaking foreign language)

(bright orchestral music)

Here in the Northwest,

a new status as part of the Peace Park

would immediately see a ban on logging,

driving, and hunting in the sanctuary.

(bright orchestral music)

Along highway three,

underpasses and overpasses would again

link the animals' migratory roots.

(bright orchestral music)

It's late October in Waterton village in Canada.

Ifan Thomas, the former Superintendent

of the National Park has come to meet Harvey Locke.

There is good news from Victoria,

the capital of British Columbia.

It seems that the pressure from Harvey's expedition team

has had an effect.

Along with the alarming reports from biologists,

rangers and river researchers,

it is clear that extending the Peace Park

can save the Crown of the Continent,

and send a strong signal

that Canada is striving to reach its target

of having 17% of its area

under a conservation order by 2020.

There will be lots of values

that we would be able to achieve if it became

part of the National Park, certainly.

The position of the government of Canada has been

that we are interested in that objective.

It's incumbent upon the BC government

that would initiate those conversations.

For Harvey Locke,

extending the park is an important step

towards an even greater goal.

I believe very deeply

that we should be protecting at least half the world,

and things like parks,

and that those should be connected together.

So the idea is called nature needs half,

protect half the world in an interconnected way.

And our challenge as humans in the 21st century is

turn it around and say, okay, we're gonna

think more about our relationship with nature.

(uplifting orchestral music)