Original subtitles

[♪]

[David Suzuki]: Canada's heartland

holds a wealth of landscapes.

Vast forests...

Rolling grasslands...

Lakes beyond counting...

And a remarkable cast of animal characters.

To the European explorers

who arrived here in the 17th century,

the Boreal forest and prairies

appeared to be pristine wilderness.

But the story of Canada's heartland

is full of surprises.

It is late march

on the grasslands of southern Saskatchewan,

and one of the prairies' most amazing displays

is kicking off.

Male sharp-tailed grouse are strutting their stuff,

sorting out their pecking order before the females arrive.

[♪]

This is a dancing competition.

The top-ranked dancer will claim a central position

and be best placed to catch the females' attention.

Grouse use the same dancing grounds year after year,

a fact well known

to one of the residents of this open landscape.

[Drumming, bells ringing]

For thousands of years,

humans have shared this landscape with wildlife.

The blackfoot First Nations People

still perform a traditional dance

inspired by the springtime antics

of the Prairie chicken.

[Singing]

Long before Europeans arrived in Canada,

its first peoples developed cultures

based on an intimate knowledge of the land and its wildlife.

[Drumming, singing]

[Bells ringing]

They also developed practices

that changed the landscape in which they lived.

In 1691, English explorer Henry Kelsey

was one of the first Europeans

to travel through southern Canada

and get a glimpse

of this amazing Prairie landscape.

His Assiniboine companions told Kelsey

about the rich hunting grounds of the great grass plains.

But nothing could have prepared him

for the spectacle he was to witness...

Bison herds numbering up to four million animals.

Bison are huge, powerful creatures

with an aggressive nature.

[♪]

At the time of Kelsey's arrival,

the grasslands stretched

from Central Mexico through the United States

into southern Canada,

from Lake Winnipeg in the east

to the Rocky Mountains in the west.

These grasslands supported many different species...

But there was one that appeared purpose-built

for this open country...

The Pronghorn antelope.

With a top speed of almost 100 kilometres an hour,

Pronghorns are the fastest hoofed animals on earth.

During Kelsey's time,

there were at least 20 million antelopes living on the plains.

Early European travellers saw the open prairie

as a wild, untouched landscape.

They were wrong.

The Prairie First Nations were great hunters,

and they had been changing this landscape

for thousands of years

with a very powerful tool...

[Blowing]

Fire.

Fire kills young trees

while leaving grass roots unscathed.

Deliberate fires kept the prairie open

by preventing trees from spreading across it...

And these people preferred grass to trees

because the animals they hunted were grazers.

The fire cleared away the dead and dried-out grass.

The ash fertilized the soil, so by the following year,

a rich new crop of grass would grow

to attract the grazing animals.

[Bison snorts]

The bison herds themselves also helped support the grass.

Their dung returned nutrients to the soil,

and their hooves disturbed the ground,

allowing a diversity of plants to grow.

The interaction of grass, bison, and people

sustained a rich, stable environment

long before Europeans arrived on the prairie.

And there was one other major element

influencing the prairie landscape...

Wolves.

Wolves played a crucial role

in maintaining the balance between bison and prairie,

keeping the herds on the move,

preventing the grassland from becoming over-grazed.

Plains people lived alongside wolves

and understood how they hunted.

They knew that bison with new calves,

instead of running, would often stand their ground.

As long as the adult bison hold their nerve,

wolves won't risk injury

by approaching within range of those horns and hooves.

But not everything in wolf's clothing

is what it seems.

Dressed in wolf skins and mimicking their movements,

the human hunters could approach

within a few metres of their target.

Their trick then was to stampede the herd

in one specific direction.

In full flight,

it's hard for a herd to suddenly slow down.

These cliffs, known as buffalo jumps,

were used sparingly by plains hunters

over the millennia.

A single buffalo jump could decimate a herd.

But it was the European hunters

who brought about the end of the buffalo

on these prairies.

Nowadays,

the prairie's wild inhabitants are much smaller...

Like these Black-tailed prairie dogs,

which make their home underneath the prairie grassland.

Prairie dogs live in vast colonies, or towns,

with kilometres of burrows.

Their entrances are surrounded by carefully tended,

volcano-shaped mounds of earth...

Lookout points from which the adults warn each other

of approaching danger.

[Calling]

This year's pups are now big enough to venture out,

though they never stray far

from the safety of their burrows.

Towards midsummer, a different bunch of babies

is ready for its first public appearance.

These burrowing owl chicks were hatched underground.

In a treeless landscape,

a vacant Prairie dog burrow is the perfect nesting option.

The owls are not so much "burrowing" as "borrowing."

Whenever mom or dad appears,

the chicks converge on them like a pack of wolves.

The chicks are growing fast,

and their appetites seem insatiable.

In the pancake-flat landscape,

a prairie dog's earth mound

gives the owls a panoramic view.

Any height helps to spot trouble.

[Chirps]

The coyote knows he's been spotted,

and continues on his way.

The chick takes advantage of the afternoon breeze

to try out its wings.

A couple of months from now,

these chicks will be fully fledged,

and the family will migrate south.

While most of us think of prairie as grassland,

there's another element to this landscape

that is every bit as important to wildlife.

Canada's heartland is studded with countless lakes,

scoured out thousands of years ago

by ice age glaciers.

Some estimates put the figure at over 10 million.

That's far more lakes than people here...

A crucial resource for water birds

returning from nesting grounds in the Arctic

on their long migration south.

Quill lakes, Saskatchewan

draws in tens of thousands of snow geese

looking for a place to stop and take on supplies.

Once they have rested and fed, the migrants must move on.

Within a few weeks, these lakes will begin to freeze,

and the enormous flocks of ducks and geese

will be far to the south.

Winter comes early to Canada's heartland.

By late october, the first frosts have arrived.

North of the Prairies,

a belt of conifer trees, the Boreal forest,

stretches the entire width of Canada.

It is considered to be

the largest intact forest left in the world.

Falling snow brings magic to the woodlands.

The first snow brings beauty to the forest,

but it also brings tough times

for many of the forest creatures.

In central Alberta,

a moose and her calf venture out into the snow,

searching for food.

When times are tough,

these willow twigs could make the difference

between life and death for these moose.

By mid-winter, the temperature has dipped below -40.

On a frozen lake,

a deer has succumbed to the cold.

The tattered carcass

looks as if it was savaged by a large predator

during the night.

Now, in the morning light, hungry whiskey jacks give way

to larger, more powerful scavengers.

The squabbling ravens sort out their pecking order

over this winter feast.

Clearly, the ravens could not have opened up the carcass,

so who did?

A wolverine.

With its muscular body, frost-shedding fur coat,

and big snowshoe paws,

a wolverine can cover

large tracts of frozen wilderness

in search of food.

Just over a metre long,

the wolverine looks like a small bear,

but is actually a member of the weasel family.

Rarely seen,

this is some of the first footage

of wild wolverines

ever recorded in North America.

[Owl hoots]

We still know very little about wolverines.

A hunter in its own right, it is also an expert scavenger.

Its immensely powerful jaws can dismember

even the most hard-frozen carcass.

Wolverines cache meat from carcasses they find

and come back to feed later.

Carcasses like this are a rare bonanza

for the scavengers in these forests.

When the weather takes a turn for the worse,

the hungry ravens make a last-ditch attempt

to fill their bellies.

But in a matter of hours,

the dead deer is entirely buried.

Later, a young male wolverine arrives on the scene.

He has no way of knowing

there is a carcass hidden beneath the snow...

But his senses are extraordinary.

Somehow, he is able to sniff out

the faint odour of frozen flesh,

even through a metre of fresh snow.

In the race to survive,

the wolverine wins by a nose.

Other creatures of the Boreal forest

have different ways of surviving the cold winter months.

In Northern Québec, beneath the blanket of insulating snow

is a beaver lodge.

The steam plume comes from the cozy interior,

currently occupied by muskrats.

Muskrats resemble beavers, but are smaller,

with slender tails.

The muskrats are squatters here,

enjoying the warmth

while the owners are busy foraging outside.

Beavers are vegetarians.

They eat mostly leaves, twigs, and bark.

If times are tough, though,

beavers can draw

on the fat reserves stored in their tails.

Muskrats have a similar diet.

The beavers keep a submerged larder

of willow and aspen in their pond

so they don't have to venture out above the ice

to forage in the cold winter months.

Until this unique new footage was filmed

inside a wild beavers' lodge,

muskrats had always been thought of as freeloaders.

But this muskrat can clearly be seen

plastering mud onto the lodge wall,

making a direct contribution to its weatherproofing.

Maybe it's time to give the "Busy Muskrat"

some recognition.

This is the first time muskrats have been recorded

helping beavers maintain a lodge.

[Chewing sounds]

Meanwhile,

in the frozen winter world outside the lodge,

change is coming.

Canada's Boreal forest contains the highest concentration

of lakes, wetlands, and undammed rivers on earth.

And as winter ends,

the vast Boreal wetland come to life.

A pair of western grebes.

This spectacular water-walking dance

is their courtship display.

Spring is a busy season for many wetland creatures,

and the beavers are no exception.

Their lodge is now an island, surrounded by a shallow pond.

The beavers created it by damming up a small creek.

They must regularly patrol their dam,

making sure it stays watertight.

If they find a leak,

they quickly set to work to fix it.

Beavers are one of the largest rodents in the world,

and they use their strength to great advantage.

All this fetching and carrying uses up a lot of energy.

A beaver's diet is relatively low in calories,

so they need to spend a lot of time feeding.

The dam mending is completed

by jamming mud and weed in the chinks between the logs.

Beaver dams may span over a hundred metres.

That's a lot of maintenance work for the adult pair.

The beavers' pond provides a habitat for waterfowl.

A pair of ring-necked ducks.

Pumped up with spring hormones,

male red-winged blackbirds stake out their territory

in song.

[Sings]

A Canada goose has made her nest on top of the lodge.

Her eggs were safe here, but now that they have hatched,

she needs to move them

so she can teach her young to find food.

But something along the water's edge

has caught her eye...

[Honking]

Reacting to the goose's alarm call,

the beaver's tail-slap

warns every other resident of the pond.

At the pond's edge,

a Red-necked grebe hops off her nest.

She can always lay another clutch if needs be.

Though their cover has been blown,

the wolves seem reluctant to give up entirely

on their duck-hunting ambitions.

When large prey is scarce,

wolves will often hunt smaller animals.

But in this deep water, it's a losing game,

and the wolf soon gives up the chase.

Once the wolves have gone,

life on the pond returns to normal.

The grebe settles back down to incubate her clutch of eggs...

While her mate brings an offering of water-weeds.

Now the goose can take her goslings to find food.

Thanks in part to beavers,

Canada's Boreal forest is as much a forest of blue

as it is of green.

Beaver-dammed waterways regulate the flow of rainwater,

reducing flooding and allowing silt to settle out

and clear water to flow.

The beavers' effect on the landscape is so profound,

the Blackfoot People had a saying

that "Beavers constructed the world in which we live."

The early European explorers, however,

saw beavers in a very different light.

In 1659, two French adventurers

mounted an ambitious trading journey

from the St. Lawrence river

deep into the wilderness of Canada's heartland.

The following summer,

the explorers suddenly reappeared...

This time with company.

The trading journey had amassed a remarkable 55 tonnes of furs,

requiring a flotilla of 100 canoes

to carry them all.

The fur industry decimated the beaver population.

Prior to the arrival of Europeans,

there were at least 400 million beavers

on the continent.

Today, there are just twelve million.

Beavers vanished from many areas,

profoundly changing

the character of the forest landscape.

But here, change isn't always gradual.

Sometimes it can arrive

with instant and terrifying force.

In the vast evergreen forests of Western Ontario,

summer lightning has sparked a huge fire.

With flames shooting over a hundred metres high,

the fire front is threatening a valuable timber reserve,

and there are human settlements in the area too.

For most of the last century,

modern forestry viewed fire as a destructive force.

Today, fire is recognized

as an essential part of the forest's life cycle,

and now wildfires are allowed to burn unchecked

unless they threaten human life or property.

Fire has always been

a natural part of this landscape,

and the trees of the Boreal

have had thousands of years to adapt.

In the wake of the flames,

the cones of the jack pine unfurl,

releasing their seeds.

Over time, new trees grow up,

and the forest gradually recovers.

But some changes to the heartland

are not so readily reversed.

Over three centuries of European settlement,

the prairie landscape has radically changed.

Neatly plowed farms and fenced-in cattle ranches

now occupy 80% of the original wild grassland.

All that remains of the vast bison herds

that once roamed the prairie

are a few small, closely managed herds

in wildlife preserves and game ranches.

On a game ranch in Manitoba,

a female bison has just given birth.

This calf is entering a world

where she will be protected from predators,

given extra feed in winter,

and generally cosseted by her human owners.

The formidable animal

that once helped shape the prairie landscape

has become a profitable commodity.

Shaped over thousands of years in the open prairie landscape,

faced with the ever-present threat of marauding wolves,

the calf instinctively struggles to its feet

within minutes of birth.

Domestication may have changed its circumstances,

but this little bison remains wild at heart.

In Southwestern Alberta, near the Rocky Mountains,

farms and fences now dominate The Prairie landscape,

but it doesn't mean

that all wildlife has disappeared.

In recent years, some surprising animals

have started to reappear

amongst the cattle fields and pastures

in what was once

their traditional prairie habitat...

Grizzly bears.

And she isn't alone.

She has three half-grown cubs with her.

These days, grizzlies are a rare sight on the prairie,

but it was not always so.

When Europeans came here 300 years ago,

they were common

across the prairies of Southern Canada.

But the people that settled here thought them dangerous,

and often shot them on sight.

By the middle of the last century,

grizzlies had been driven to extinction

right across the prairies.

However, some bears survived in the mountains to the west,

occasionally wandering down to the plains.

Although much of their diet is plant based,

at certain times of the year,

some grizzly bears do kill and eat livestock...

So it's a testament to our changing attitudes

that people are willing

to explore a new relationship with these amazing animals.

For thousands of years,

humans have lived alongside wildlife

in Canada's heartland,

and so long as we afford nature the space it needs,

it will continue to flourish...

And surprise us.