- Press it out.

Yeah.

Good.

Come on.

Come on.

- These acrobatic moves in Wyoming challenge the mind and body.

- Whoo-hoo!

- We have water in places we've never had water before.

- On the East Coast alone, coping with sea level rise could be a trillion-dollar investment.

- People have connections to the outdoors through recreation that are almost as strong as connections they have to family and friends and their pets.

- So how do we best plan for the future of a forest?

- So they have kind of a tough life.

- Hop to it.

Some lessons from pygmy rabbits.

So saddle up for another edition of "This American Land."

[dynamic music] ♪ ♪ - Hello, and welcome to "This American Land."

I'm your host, Ed Arnett.

We've got some great stories for you today about the conservation of America's natural resources, our landscapes, waters, and wildlife, and the people who are dedicated to conservation.

Today we'll start by going to the East Coast where many communities are already dealing with damage from sea level rise, one of the consequences of climate change.

Flood damage can be dramatic and expensive.

Just ask some folks in Norfolk, Virginia, where scientist and homeowners are using education and innovation to tackle this growing threat.

[thunder booming, wind howling] - The wind was howling so hard.

We were afraid.

We were just scared to death, because it sounded as if it was taking the roof off.

[ominous music] I just never contemplated the water coming in the house.

It happened so fast, and then the rugs, the mats, they were just floating.

And it was nothing we could do but pray and wait, and that's what we did.

The time of the slug, the Nor'easter in 2009, my mother and I were sitting here at this table, and we were eating crab legs and just having a good time.

I moved my foot, and water splashed.

And then that's when I felt something biting me.

And I kept jumping, and when I realized how high the water came up-- some of the outlets were near the floorboard, and the water had gotten somehow into the current, you know, electricity, and it was shocking me.

My name is Karen Spates, and I live in Norfolk, Virginia, with my mother, Lillian Spates.

♪ ♪ We have water in places we've never had water before.

It's not just a problem, you know, for a particular neighborhood.

♪ ♪ - So I think, you know, your idea about trying something innovative here.

I mean that's exactly what needs to happen.

You can come here some days and there's fish in the gutter along that street, minnows.

This neighborhood illustrates a lot of the challenges that we face in dealing with this, the flooding problem.

They've elevated the street.

I think it was from basically where that car is parked over to here, about one block, and it was $1.2 million.

You begin to see the race that's on between raising the infrastructure and the rate of sea level rise.

And going further forward, we're gonna get more and more and more seawater.

And so, logically, you'd look at this neighborhood and you go, "Well, let's just buy it out, "revert it, turn it back to the open space that it was, and call it a day."

But in practice, it's very, very difficult to do that, because the city of Norfolk needs that tax revenue to keep viable.

♪ ♪ I'm Skip Stiles.

I'm executive director of Wetlands Watch based here in Norfolk, Virginia.

So this water is just... coming in off of the Lafayette River And so the city has put in a wetland here.

Basically saying, "It wants to be a wetland.

Let's help it."

And so this is one of the critical pieces of adaptation that's pretty novel.

Restoring the ecosystem, getting the ecosystem values back and providing a whole lot of stormwater treatment.

Wetlands Watch is a statewide, nonprofit.

We're trying to find other solutions as well.

We have a phone app, a smartphone app of sea level rise that allows people to crowdsource information about where the flooding is occurring.

If you get the people in this neighborhood engaged, they can go out and tell you exactly where the flooding is occurring, and then that information can be used to develop predictive models and solutions for this neighborhood at zero cost.

The local governments here all get it.

You know, at first, there was some resistance to talking about sea level rise, but people are getting wet enough.

They want solutions.

[tense music] - Since 1930, we've seen an increase, about 14 inches in the area relative sea level rise, and the projections suggest that we'll see another three to seven feet by the end of the century.

Climate change is a big issue, but sea level rise, specific issues on the coast, it's a difficult conversation to have when a large population of the United States lives inland.

The level of infrastructure needs on the East Coast alone, it's in the trillions of dollars.

You know, we need to get moving pretty soon on this.

My name is Thomas Quattlebaum.

I'm the Sea Level Rise Fellow for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

The fear is is that they'll continue to put more sea walls, more bulkheads, more hard structures in place to keep the water coming in which won't allow anywhere for that marsh to migrate inland.

But you can use alternatives like living shorelines which is basically engineered shoreline marsh structure that basically can also prevent erosion as well as providing that habitat, water-quality kind of thing.

We've realized that there are better ways to do things through green infrastructure, nature-based solutions.

We're here at the Brock Environmental Center.

It was completed in late 2014.

The cite was designed to generate zero runoff.

[somber piano music] And I don't think we're at that point where it's, you know, abandon, retreat.

I think that there are ways that we can plan our way through this and adapt.

And the work that we're doing is really trying to push for nature-based solutions as a part of the solution.

You know, people still want to live by or near the water.

This whole region has a water-based economy.

You can't walk away from it.

though the issue is, how do you fix it?

How do you live with it?

How do you deal with the problem that we've got?

♪ ♪ - I don't want to leave.

You know, I want to be part of the solution.

But something is happening, and we have to pay attention.

And we have to be proactive, I believe.

We have to do something.

Committed people are going to make a difference 'cause we really are in this together.

[gentle acoustic strumming] ♪ ♪ - In Wyoming, there are vast stretches of public lands that provide breathtaking opportunities for recreation, from a popular sport called bouldering to the quiet inspiration of a hike in the wild with the dogs.

We sent a crew to some wilderness study areas there to see how local people are working to share and preserve their past and future to benefit everyone.

[lively music] ♪ ♪ - I usually just start like this-- - Okay.

- Right hand in.

♪ ♪ Hit this, and then it's all about getting your right foot that high.

- Okay.

Ooh, yeah.

- Which feels really strange.

- Okay.

- Get like that, and then stand up over it.

Bouldering is all about trying to do hard moves on rock.

It was actually started from gymnastics.

Press it out.

Yeah.

Good.

Come on.

Come on.

All right.

You all right?

- I just didn't get it up, but I-- - You were so close.

My best moments are just exploring in places like this, just looking for new boulders, and you never know what you're going to find.

And sometimes you come around the bend and just see something that's amazing.

- There you go.

- Nicely done.

- Whoo-hoo!

Good job.

[clapping] - So I appreciate having public lands.

As it is now, it's pretty nice for boulderers We're able to access what we need to access.

- The spot we're in now, Lincoln Dome Wilderness Study Area, is one of four that's part of the Sweetwater Rocks region in Central Wyoming and is a prime spot, I believe, for citizens to get together and decide what this management should be.

Amazing opportunities for recreation, whether that's hiking, hunting, bouldering, family camping, wandering, rockhounding, photography, and so I want us to see design management that protects those uses and those values and doesn't allow uses that might impair those-- that quality of that experience.

The best thing that could happen for the Wyoming Public Lands Initiative committee here in Fremont County is to have a process that is transparent, that builds consensus.

♪ ♪ - Land management issues are contentious.

Right now we're dealing with an effort by many western states to, in some way, transfer public lands from control of the federal government to control of the states, and a lot of us have some concerns about that.

My name is Andy Blair.

I'm the assistant director of NOLS Rocky Mountain based in Lander, Wyoming.

[gentle music] - So we're here at Sweetwater Rocks.

- Right.

- Which is a segment of the Granite Mountains.

We have pyramids in Egypt and cathedrals in Europe, and in America we have public land, big open space in the West that we all own a piece of and that defines some of our character and the opportunity we have and the freedom that we like to enjoy.

And so there can be a real sense of wonder and awe and freedom just for that hour, two hours, five hours, whatever you have when you get to wander out here.

Your mind gets to roam as much as your feet, and it's truly special.

So what we're going to do through this collaboration, if we do find consensus on a final recommendation, we'll take that to our congressional delegation.

Behind me here is the valley of the Sweetwater River, which was the main route on the Oregon California Mormon trail, Pony Express Trail, between near the 1840s and 1869 when the railroad was finished.

Somewhere between 350,000 and 500,000 people came through here every summer, and they were on their way to gold diggings in California and free land in Oregon and religious freedom in Utah.

Split Rock, which is here right behind me, it was visible for, you know, a day and a half or two days in both directions, but here in this open, open country it just looks pretty much the same as it did when those wagons were coming past.

♪ ♪ - I'm a backcountry archery hunter.

So you can go out here for a mule deer and have the kind of rugged, solitude kind of open-area hunt that you're never going to see another person.

And these little bits of land are these snapshots, sort of time capsules of landscapes.

You know, what we see here is probably what it looked like 50 years ago, 100 years ago, which is what's so unique about these places in Wyoming.

You know, this Wyoming Public Lands Initiative is so huge, and it has such big implications.

This is a time to help protect these places.

It's America's public lands.

It's not Wyoming's public lands.

The having that place to get out, whether it's to hunt, to recreate, to take your kids, is special and unique, and I think everybody is on that same page.

So you can have the energy guy standing next to the conservation person going, "Yeah, we all agree.

We all got something out of this."

♪ ♪ - I moved out here intentionally because of public lands.

I grew up on the East Coast where everything was private.

You know, you can't go here; you can't go there.

I think that wild country is important to us as a society and as a species.

We're a creation of this wild country just like every other species out here.

And I think if we lose track of that, if we stop paying attention to it, it's to our peril.

It's really hard to convey in words.

You know, you've got to be out here when it's sunny, when it's snowing and feel that change taking place in you.

If you're out here to learn something about wild places, to learn something about yourself, learn something about being in a community of people, and you have a positive outlook on that then you're going to have a good time.

- Hey, look what we've got here.

This is precious.

This is something worth fighting for, worth showing up for, and, you know, it might be a two- or three-year initiative.

This is a really good thing.

An incredible, incredible opportunity is here, and we need to take it.

The Wyoming Public Lands Initiative is something that we find great promise in.

So are there bikers, are there climbers, are there oil and gas, you know, drilling companies?

Make sure that everybody who has involvement or a relevancy in the area we're discussing are at the table.

You choose to live in Wyoming for a reason or for a couple of reasons.

You know, we all want big, open country to hike in, to hunt in, to camp with your family, whether that's primitive or in a more developed area.

These are part of the kind of common ground we have as Wyomingites.

I see that every day.

♪ ♪ [gentle acoustic strumming] - Around every 15 years, the U.S. Forest Service requires a new management plan for each national forest.

Just think how much your life has changed in 15 years, and forests go through big transitions too.

We travel now to the Nantahala-Pisgah National Forest in western North Carolina where the public is playing a huge role in shaping the complex future of this forest, and we meet some people who are protecting and enjoying it.

- A forest plan, I like to think of as being similar to the master plan that you might find for a local community.

Your city has a plan that describes what you want the city to look like into the future.

It lays out the direction, the long-term goals that we want to see for this forest, not just for now, but for the next generation.

♪ ♪ - So we are on the banks of the Nantahala River in the Nantahala-Pisgah National Forest.

It draws over 200,000 paddlers a year.

- If you were just out here trail-riding, every day the same trails, it might get boring, but when you're out here working on trails, it gives you another appreciation about what there is to do.

- In our business, we use yellow poplar.

When we harvest that land it'll be harvested in a way that's, you know, protects these other uses, like wildlife and water, and so you don't harvest every acre.

You don't harvest every tree on these lands.

[water running] - We have 4,000 miles of trout streams in western North Carolina.

And most of them are on forest-serviced land.

To go out and fish and hunt on these public lands it's just an opportunity that people all over the world relish.

- So the Nantahala-Pisgah are two forests that combine to cover 1.1 million acres.

We are one of the most visited national forests in the country, and there is a diversity of ecosystems here.

We need to hear from the public, and we need to hear from all voices We've also faced new challenges, increased insects and disease, When we have these changing conditions, both ecologically and then also socially, from increased folks coming to visit our national forest, new recreation trends, greater development in and around the national forest lands.

All of those things affect the way we plan to manage for the future.

Collaboration is not easy, but the rewards are great for folks to bring their perspective, to stand in someone else's shoes for a moment.

[dramatic music] ♪ ♪ The Forest Service staff has decreased over time.

Our budgets are also decreasing, and we depend on working with others to accomplish our core mission, and so that means that we work with volunteers.

- Everyone ready?

- Whoo.

- It's time to get your tools, get your gear.

Volunteers make a huge difference.

That's why I started Southern Appalachian Wilderness Stewards.

Since we started seven years ago, we've generated over 100,000 hours of service on public lands.

This year we'll be employing 42 young people who are getting connected to their public lands in a real and tangible way.

We do use hand tools throughout our program.

Nothing mechanized.

Nothing motorized.

♪ ♪ - This could potentially be an area that you would want to do some sort of drain to pull that water off of the trail.

- The Wilderness is one of the multiple uses that you find on the forest service and during the revision process we're required to take a look to see if we need to be considering additional areas in the Wilderness systems.

- The Wilderness designation is a pretty incredible step that we took as a country with the passage of the Wilderness Act of 1964.

And it's a value that recognizes that man needs to check our ego at the door a little bit, that we don't always have all of the answers for what's right for natural systems.

[upbeat music] Now, the thing about a timber sale program on the national forest, it's one of the only tools that you have where you can manipulate the vegetation to improve things like wildlife habitat.

♪ ♪ We manufacture in this plant here at Old Fort about 10,500 4x8 panels a day.

We have to reach out today over 200 miles to supply this mill.

If we had a reasonable timber sale program here on this national forest maybe we wouldn't have to buy 5 million feet from Kentucky and haul it 225 miles If we could buy that 5 million feet closer in, it would save a lot of transportation costs.

It's better for the environment, because you're burning less diesel fuel.

[upbeat guitar music] - When you're fly-fishing, you're trying to emulate the food that's trapped which means the bugs and the string, but there's also about 3,000 flies in my vest here so hopefully I can usually simulate what they're eating.

The hunting and angling community has organized very well, and our message is always the same, "Protect, enhance wildlife habitats and we'll help."

Just the impact of trout fishing economically is over $200 million a year.

In order to protect wildlife resources, you have to protect the air, you have to protect the water, you have to protect agencies such as EPA that's under extreme duress now.

♪ ♪ - This is Boomer.

He's a 12-year-old walking horse.

♪ ♪ I use these loppers while I'm on horseback to take out smaller limbs so I don't even have to get off my horse to do it.

I belong to a national organization-- about 15,000 members-- called the Backcountry Horsemen of America.

There's about 300 members in North Carolina.

We do workdays once a month.

I know that if a person doesn't understand and appreciate something, they can't love it.

And if we don't get everyone to love these national forests lands, we're never going to be able to preserve them.

♪ ♪ - I do river conservation and access work, and I represent whitewater paddlers in all kinds of public processes.

Paddling drives passion.

People have connections to the outdoors through recreation that are almost as strong as connections they have to family and friends and their pets.

I mean, and we've helped by access areas so that rivers become continuous water trails that connect the national forest to the communities.

So forest service is being very light on their feet with learning from other forests, and we help with that.

You know, we help tell stories about what's working and what isn't.

[gentle guitar music] - It's an honor and a responsibility, and I think that's one thing that unites all of us at the collaborative table is that everybody wants to do the right thing, not just for what makes sense in 2017, but for what makes sense for our kids and the future generations.

♪ ♪ [gentle acoustic strumming] - Now to Idaho, where scientist are studying the difficult lives of pygmy rabbits living in sagebrush ecosystems.

Data from tracking collars and imagery from unmanned aerial vehicles help generate maps that show rabbits use and shape sagebrush providing insights to managing and saving threatened sagebrush landscapes in the West.

Here's Miles O'Brien in our "Science Nation" report.

[percussive music] - When your task is trapping a rabbit, you've got to be on the hop.

♪ ♪ Sometimes that's easier said than done.

- Oh, there he is.

[groans] So we are located in eastern Idaho in the Lemhi Valley.

It's a high-desert valley that runs along the border with Montana.

And it's a sagebrush step environment, which means it's a mix of shrub and grasslands, and it is just a gorgeous, gorgeous intact piece of sagebrush landscape.

- In the broom.

- Yes.

- It's not usually this hard.

- With support from the National Science Foundation, mammalian ecologist Janet Rachlow with the University of Idaho and a team want to understand this critical habitat from the perspective of a small but important long-term resident, the pygmy rabbit.

Today they're trapping and collaring.

[device beeps] There we go.

Good tag.

Our hope is that our research can contribute to not just an understanding of rabbits but also an understanding of how this system functions so that for the long-term we can have this system on the landscape in a healthy condition.

♪ ♪ - The rabbits live in burrows under raised clumps of sage called mima mounds.

- So they have kind of a tough life.

They really do.

They have a large number of predators.

Aerial predators--so birds.

There are mammals-- the badgers, weasels, coyotes.

Just about everything eats pygmy rabbits.

So hiding, putting themselves in places where they're close to burrows where they can quickly escape from predators, that's really important.

♪ ♪ - Sheltering from the heat and cold is important too, but so is food.

Sometimes they risk a venture into the open to eat.

Lisa Shipley is a forging ecologist with Washington State University.

- Especially in the winter, it might eat 99% of its diet in sagebrush, 'cause it's very nutritious.

It has a lot of protein in it, but it also has a lot of toxic chemicals.

It's the only mammal that can eat sagebrush for a virtually-- exclusive its diet.

- Using tracking data from the collars and imagery from unmanned aerial vehicles, the team generates maps that show where and when the rabbits spend their time, in burrows, under the sagebrush, and out in the open.

Maps like these can tell them a lot about how the rabbits use and ultimately shape the landscape around them.

- They have to make choices all the time.

So they can choose to forage in an area that has high-quality forage, but it might be more risky or forage in an area that's out in the open, but then they're in the sun, and they overheat fairly rapidly.

So all of the time, they're making trade-offs between places that are safe, places that are comfortable, places that are good to eat.

- Big picture: they hope their work with rabbits will help preserve this rich sagebrush ecosystem, which covers large swaths of the western U.S. - We know that certain species of sagebrush, certain ages of sagebrush on certain types of landscapes have higher nutrition.

That can be something that could be targeted in restoration projects that might use seed sources from sagebrush from different areas.

- So what we would like to do is to understand habitat quality so that we can work with land managers to help with, for example, restoration.

There are very large fires that have occurred in several of the western states in sagebrush environments, and there's a lot of energy and time that's going into trying to restore the habitat so that it's suitable for wildlife as well as domestic livestock, and we need to know, how should we restore this environment?

- That's nothing to quiver your nose over.

[gentle acoustic strumming] - That's all for now, and thanks for joining us.

We'll see you next time on "This American Land."

- For more information about this program, find us at: And visit our other social media.

You can like us on Facebook, cruise our YouTube channel, and meet some conservation heroes we've told you about on PBS Passport.

[dynamic music] ♪ ♪