- Just ahead on "This American Land"... - It makes me feel complete.

I feel at peace when I come up here.

And I love everything that I see.

- A quiet celebration of the Wilderness Act, six decades of protection for places of solitude, challenge, discovery, and freedom.

No noise, just nature.

[soft music] Along the Colorado River, millions of birds rely on the Pacific Flyway during migration.

- So they need stopover areas to where they can continue to feed.

They use a lot of energy.

You know, sometimes they're flying thousands of miles.

- We'll show you the heavy-duty conservation efforts helping them fight habitat loss and warming temperatures.

You're looking at the roots of a revolution.

- And we are working actively with a number of commercial partners to develop a whole line of new food products that are made from Kernza.

- From pastries to beer to aviation fuel?

Perennial crops bring new foods and new fuels to a sustainable playing field.

Take a walk with us on the wilderness side on "This American Land."

[dynamic music] ♪ ♪ Funding for "This American Land" provided by the Walton Family Foundation, the Horner Family Fund.

- Hey, everybody, and welcome to a new season of "This American Land."

I'm your host, Ed Arnett.

Our show celebrates this country's natural resources, and we'll share some of the hard work and dedication of some of the folks conserving our landscapes, waters, and wildlife.

Our first story reveals how important wilderness is to our ecosystems and our connection to the natural world.

This is the 60th anniversary of the Wilderness Act.

Let's go to Colorado and show you why its safeguards are more important than ever.

[soft music] ♪ ♪ - You know what you're going to get when you come to a wilderness area.

You're going to get a place that's wild, that's quiet, where you're going to hear the sounds of nature... [wind whooshing] That doesn't have the scars of extraction and development, where nature is running its course.

[birds chirping] - We love the Zirkels.

It's an awesome wilderness area.

There's plenty of lakes, a lot of good opportunities out there for recreation, backpacking.

- Fishing, hiking.

We hunt.

So we try to fit everything in.

♪ ♪ - It is a place where literally only horse and foot travel are allowed, so no wheels, nothing mechanized, nothing with an engine, nothing with a motor, nothing with a battery.

- Wilderness areas are widely popular among the American people.

- 2024 is the 60th anniversary of the Wilderness Act.

It was imagined and created not so much by lawmakers but a groundswell of concern by ordinary people who saw cherished natural wonders in danger.

- So about 90 years ago, four of the original founders of the Wilderness Society-- and this includes Bob Marshall and Benton MacKaye, who's often considered the father of the Appalachian Trail-- were driving in a car together through the Southern Appalachian Mountains.

[soft music] And in this car ride, they were talking about the impact that roads like the one that they were driving on have on the surrounding mountain landscape.

And it was there that they decided to form an organization dedicated to protecting America's wild places from intrusions such as road building, which then led to the formation of the Wilderness Society just a few months later, in January 1935.

- Their passion caught on.

The Wilderness Act of 1964, signed by President Lyndon Johnson, protected 9 million acres.

- This is a very happy and historic occasion for all who love the great American outdoors.

And that, needless to say, includes me.

- The Wilderness Act created a tool for local communities to use to protect wild places and natural areas that they cherish from threats posed by development like mining and drilling and road building.

- Today, more than 111 million acres in 44 states and Puerto Rico are protected.

♪ ♪ - Better shove off.

- Upwards of 10 million people visit these places annually, and that translates into thousands of jobs in recreation and tourism as well as hundreds of millions of dollars in spending in nearby local economies.

- I'm here with Jenny Burbey with the Colorado Outfitters Association.

Jenny, wilderness areas are really important to your business, aren't they?

- Absolutely paramount to our business.

They're paramount to humanity.

It's where we can get our solitude.

It provides an incredible amount of habitat, and it creates an experience that most of us don't get to have on any other basis.

♪ ♪ - Today we're here right outside the Indian Peaks Wilderness.

It's about-- I would say two hours from Denver to get up here.

- So this is sort of the perfect altitude for good hiking.

We always bring the dog, and the dog is allowed in the wilderness area.

She loves hiking.

It's really good to get her out, get her some exercise, get me some exercise.

♪ ♪ - Now, I've been very fortunate in my life and throughout my career to have great experiences in wilderness areas like the one behind me here in Colorado.

It gives me a sense of peace and tranquility when I'm in wilderness.

You just feel so alone and isolated in these special places.

And I've had the opportunity to work with some amazing animals in wilderness, like Rocky Mountain Bighorn sheep for my master's thesis research.

These areas are special, and even if people don't get a chance to visit wilderness areas, you should know that they provide critical habitat for wildlife, clean water, and other benefits for our environment.

[soft music] The first wilderness area anywhere in the world was declared in New Mexico's Gila National Forest.

- The Gila just celebrated its 100th anniversary.

And it is a beautiful, amazing, wild place where natural systems, wolves, wildlife movement, wildfire run their course as they should.

And it's a forest like no other.

♪ ♪ - Perhaps the best way to enjoy these special places is simply to stop, look, and listen.

[water rushing] [leaves rustling] - When I was younger, I often sought out wilderness for the adventure and the recreation.

But now that I'm a father with a couple of kids, it's a little different, you know.

It's a place that I go just to try and help them understand the larger world and their place in it.

♪ ♪ - Climate change and stresses like drought and severe wildfires pose big challenges.

- Wilderness requires a community.

And that collection of individuals includes volunteers pulling on the crosscut saws like the Back Country Horsemen of America.

It requires agency staff to make sure that our wilderness areas are stewarded appropriately.

And it requires passionate activists to make sure that the wilderness idea remains relevant and alive.

- It makes me feel complete.

I feel at peace when I come up here, and I love everything that I see.

It just makes your eyes more open.

[insects chirping] [soft guitar music] - We've lost over 3 billion birds since the 1970s.

And with increasing threats to habitat and rising temperatures, 2/3 of all North American birds face an uncertain future.

But until now, the massive decline of those bird populations has been due in large part to habitat destruction.

Brad Hicks shows us how, along one of the most important bird migration routes in America, the landscape is being stripped to bare soil.

The reason may surprise you.

- Terry Murphy... - So we're about 70 miles north of Yuma, Arizona.

- Is driving to a place few people go... - We're about 15 miles south of Blythe, California.

- Where the federal government is scraping the land bare... - We're headed right to the river now.

- On the banks of the Colorado River.

- They'll take the dozers and clear that vegetation, knock it down.

It's loaded int the dump trucks.

Once we've cleared it, we then establish a cover crop, something like alfalfa.

- So this will at one point be an alfalfa field.

- That is correct.

- Thirsty alfalfa, the very crop being blamed for many of the water woes in the West.

So this road will be a canal at some point filled with water?

- Absolutely.

And with an access road on either side.

That's right.

- So it can irrigate this field right over here?

- Yep.

- You'll see why it actually makes sense in a moment.

[somber music] - What happened that we lost 3 billion birds since 1970?

[sighs] ♪ ♪ - For years, the National Audubon Society has warned about the dramatic decline of birds in North America.

Haley Paul has been sounding the alarm in Arizona.

- A large amount is the loss of habitat and then the slowly increasing temperatures and just the shifting of things as birds have to adjust.

♪ ♪ - Along the Lower Colorado, where birds cling to the only water source for miles, habitat loss and reduced river flows have put hundreds of species in peril.

- It's a ribbon of green.

It's a ribbon of life through these arid landscapes.

- So any loss of habitat along that ribbon impacts not just local resident bird species but can also short circuit migration routes with far reaching effects.

The Lower Colorado River and the delta through which it flows in Mexico is a crucial bottleneck for migrating birds, a literal lifeline through the desert along the important Pacific Flyway.

Birds passing through that funnel each spring from Central and South America fly as far north as Alaska and across the Rockies and beyond.

- So they need stopover areas to where they can continue to feed.

They use a lot of energy, you know.

Sometimes they're flying thousands of miles.

- Which brings us back to those bulldozers.

This is part of the Bureau of Reclamation's Multi-Species Conservation Program, a visionary, long-term plan to create forests and wetlands with native plants along the Lower Colorado.

Seeing a field of heavy equipment like this is not what one necessarily expects when they're thinking about doing something that's good for the environment.

- Yeah, absolutely.

The nice thing is the vegetation that existed here was all non-native.

It's an invasive species, salt cedar.

So clearing it's a good thing.

[pensive music] - Salt cedar is a problem across the desert Southwest.

The government originally planted it more than a century ago to control erosion on riverbanks.

It grows super fast, sucks huge amounts of water from the ground, and leaves the soil too salty for native plants to survive.

Plus, it's a lousy habitat for birds.

But getting rid of the salt cedar is only the first step.

If native species were replanted right away, they'd die in the salty soil.

And that's where the alfalfa comes in.

What are the steps you have to take to get to that point where you can plant the natural vegetation out here?

- Once we've cleared it, we then establish a cover crop.

It's usually something native as, like, salt grass, and we will leach the salts through the soil profile, getting that soil ready for restoration.

And then after three to five years, we'll convert that over to something like alfalfa.

♪ ♪ Alfalfa is a good nitroge fixer in the soil, and it helps really reduce the salinity on the soil, which long term gives us better survivorship of our native trees.

And once the native trees are established, the alfalfa is no shade tolerant, so it will disappear.

♪ ♪ - Eight years will pass before they can plant the riparian forest of native cottonwood, willow, and mesquite on this square mile of soil.

So far, the Bureau of Reclamation's Multi-Species Conservation Program has created 18 of these native habitats along the Lower Colorado, from below Lake Mead to the Mexican border, more than 7,000 acres.

And there are other strategies.

Here, they channel Colorado River water through a low-lying area to create wetlands.

The water ends up back in the river and, along the way, transforms the landscape.

This looks like it's been here millions of years.

- [laughs] Well, thank you.

It hasn't, but we're quite proud of it as well.

So, yes, if you clear, create, contour, and manage your water levels correctly, you can establish cattails and other marsh vegetation, and the species will come and use it.

- And this is what it looks like if you don't add water.

- Absolutely.

This is probably 10 years ago this was cleared.

And you can see it's just so saline that very little is growing on it, except some invasive salt cedar.

- That tree right there is a Goodding's willow.

- Chris Dodge is the wildlife biologist monitoring the program's success.

- These conservation areas represent a great portion of what is actually native habitat on the river.

We have the mesquite here on the perimeter farthest from the water, and then closer to the water, we have the cottonwood willow.

- So this is like how it naturally would have occurred?

- Yes.

- He has been doing this for decades, and he has seen how it's making a difference.

- There were bird surveys done before we started working.

And so there are some species that we are tasked with covering, like the yellow warbler and the Bell's vireo that were listed as almost completely absent from the river that we now find fairly regularly at our conservation area.

- The birds are back, yes.

Let's go ahead and get started.

He's a lesser yellowlegs.

- Nancy Meister has been birdwatching along the Lower Colorado for half a century.

- We're seeing more birds than we ever saw before.

- At 12:00 is a blue heron.

- Her Wednesday morning birdwatching group meets in the southernmost conservation area... - You can't miss it.

This is downward.

- The Yuma East Wetlands.

- We're seeing a lot more variety of birds, and we're seeing larger numbers of birds here.

- Today they want to see... - Warblers.

- We were hearing a yellow-rumped warbler.

- There's one right up there.

- This is just exciting for us here.

- But perhaps no one is more excited than Terry Murphy.

He has been working on the Multi-Species Conservation Program since day one, nearly 30 years ago.

- I take great solace in knowing that, even though I know I've created this for an endangered species, all kinds of species use this.

And that includes humans.

- And with the program fully funded for another 30 years, he knows the improvements will be enjoyed for generations to come.

- So 10 years from now, you'll look out here, and you will see a lush green forest.

And you'll see bird flying around.

It'll look like it's been here forever.

♪ ♪ [soft guitar music] - Your local diner might not have Kernza pancakes on the menu, but this grain is part of a new chapter in agriculture.

It's about more than just growing more corn or soybeans on an acre.

Responsible land use now means considering our entire planet, from food security to new sources of revenue for farmers.

For over a quarter century, the University of Minnesota's Forever Green Initiative has developed more than a dozen crops that take on those challenges.

Hearty grains like Kernza are already tasting success in snacks, breads, and beer.

Researchers here are working on sustainable plant proteins for both humans and animals.

This regenerative agriculture can also help provide climate solutions by storing carbon and rebuilding soil.

And they may provide answers to another big challenge-- new sources of renewable energy.

Crops not needed as a food source can be converted into sustainable aviation fuels.

Oilseed crops like camelina are gaining a market in transportation.

Getting from the field to the fuel tank is a complex process, much like oil refining, and the product has to be compatible with existing aircraft engines and infrastructure.

But the clean possibilities are exciting.

Federal scientists are also working on wood-based biomass as a starting point for fuels with a lower carbon footprint.

Let's take you back to Minnesota and some of the creative new trends in American agriculture.

- In Western Minnesota, as across much of Central and Southern Minnesota, the landscape gradually goes from black to green to brown, and then the primary tillage turns those fields back to black soil.

- We grow crops very intensively for about four months of the year, and those are the warm summer months.

And then after that, we harvest them.

And for the most part, we have nothing on the soil.

Soil that does not have living plant roots in it cannot be fully healthy soil.

[soft music] - The challenge farmers face in the Midwest is that we've become very good at producing corn and soybeans.

After a few profitable years, we find that the price of those commodities has dropped, and some farmers are losing money on every acre they plant.

Now we're actually starting to see people losing their farms, and there's a palpable sense of despair among many farmers.

♪ ♪ - So what we need to do is define a way for farmers to grow things during the other eight months of the year.

And this is the whole project that we have going on in the Forever Green Initiative.

[light music] - The Forever Green Initiative is a program that has been in place for about 25 years and is designed to develop the next generation of agronomic crops.

We're now standing in the research fields at the University of Minnesota, where most of the crops that are currently grown in the state of Minnesota have been produced.

We have a series of perennial crops that are under development-- for instance, hazelnut, silflower, perennial flax, elderberry.

♪ ♪ - We are trying to change agriculture in a fundamental way to make sure that we have living roots and living crops present on the land all year round.

This is the world's first perennial grain crop for the temperate zone.

This is called Kernza, also known as intermediate wheat grass, and it produces a grain that's very similar to wheat.

And it can be used for many of the same purposes as wheat.

It's a small plant above ground.

Below ground, its roots extend as far as 15 and 20 feet down into the soil.

So it produces a remarkable structure.

It's able to hold on to very large amounts of rainfall.

It's a remarkable plant, and we are working actively with a number of commercial partners to develop a whole line of new food products that are made from Kernza.

♪ ♪ - My name is Carmen Fernholz, and my wife, Sally, and I operate about 350 acres of organic diversified crops here near Madison, Minnesota.

We are looking at the Kernza field that I planted.

And the nice thing about this crop is it's a perennial.

It grows back each year.

So I as a farmer don't have to come back each spring and work the ground and reseed the crop.

If we get down close here, this is what the new Kernza looks like.

This is baby, baby Kernza, a little over a month old.

And you can see how it's already branched out.

I'm going to guess that root system is down at least 6 inches or better.

The nice thing about this field now is that it'll actually stay green now over the winter.

In fact, if there were a foot of snow on this in the winter and you come out here and dig, it would probably still be a little bit green.

In fact, the snow protects it so it can keep growing over the winter.

And if we really want to get scientific, if something is growing, we've got microbial activity in that soil building fertility even during the winter months.

Check out the Kernza crop that we harvested this year.

This is the raw seed as it has come from the combine.

- Kernza flour.

- When I first learned about Kernza and the whole idea behind it, this whole new paradigm of how we could do agriculture in our country, I got really excited.

My name is Tracy Singleton, and I am the owner of the Birchwood Café in Minneapolis.

Our mission here is really to connect people to where their food comes from.

So we're seeing as much of our ingredients as possible from local farmers using organic and sustainable and regenerative practices.

It fits in with everything that we do here at the Birchwood.

We've made waffles with it.

We've made pancakes with it.

We make the crackers with it, and we have it in a focaccia bread.

- All right.

Ready?

- Yep.

Here we go.

- We started with Kernza when Marshall from Birchwood Café asked us if we wanted to brew with it.

And how many times do brewers get to brew with a new grain?

We said absolutely yes we would.

- We are Sandy and Jay Boss Febbo, owner brewers of Bang Brewing.

- In Saint Paul, Minnesota.

- We have a one-room brewery that does everything.

- It's a 30,000 bushel Brock grain bin.

- So it's a visual tie to the farms that make possible what we do.

- Man, I do what I can.

- We have people showing up that know that we brew with Kernza.

And they look specifically at the menu and ask which beer features the grain.

We even have a banner in our brewery that depicts the root structure of Kernza compared to annual wheat to scale.

And the visual of that root mass is just incredible.

- Working with Kernza has been an honor.

- The principles that drive us-- smallest footprint, biggest impact.

We're focused on working with sustainably farmed and organic ingredients.

Perennial grain is such a novelty in the world of beer that it's been awesome.

- When it comes to perennial crops in general, we're looking for a win-win all the way through the system-- protecting the natural resources for the public and providing new economic opportunities for that supply chain, including rural communities and marketers.

- When I look ahead to the next 20, 25 years, I'm hoping that my grandchildren look across this landscape and see all of these green fields in the middle of November, and then, in the springtime, as the snow is melting away, see these same green fields out there.

♪ ♪ [soft guitar music] - And now here's a look at some stories from our next show.

- Grizzlies are back, and humans can help keep it that way.

- We want to make sure that the product passes the test to help those bears out in the wild so that they don't get in trouble.

- Bear proofing can help keep everybody safe.

- The key about living with bears is you don't want to surprise a bear.

Bears travel on the same trails that we do, sort of a shared use.

I would recommend that, anywhere you go in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, that you carry bear spray.

- Thanks for watching.

And we'll see you next time.

- And you can always watch our show on PBS Passport.

Funding for "This American Land" provided by the Walton Family Foundation, the Horner Family Fund.

[dynamic music] ♪ ♪