Earth: A New Wild (2015) s01e01 Episode Script
Home
The wilds of planet Earth are spectacular.
Yet one species is always framed out of the picture.
Us.
I'm Dr.
M.
Sanjayan.
As a scientist and conservationist, I've dedicated the past 25 years of my life to studying and protecting the wildlife I love.
Hold on, buddy! [Screams and laughs.]
Now, my mission is to tell you an untold story, where we humans are not separate from nature.
We are part of it.
I'm going to the frontiers of where man and animals meet.
And here I'm discovering just how much we need each other to survive.
Oh, wow.
This is a place where elephants police rainforests.
And man-eating tigers actually protect a nation of millions.
Even the most unlikely creatures are crucial to our survival.
This is the future where humans and wildlife are adapting and thriving side-by-side.
There it is.
Our home is changing.
Amazing, huh? Now there's a new kind of wild.
February 3rd, 2015 The Min Mountains in China are home to one of the most famous animals on Earth, and one of the rarest.
Here an exciting future is taking shape, one that shows how sharing our home with wild neighbors brings benefits for both them and us.
And that's what my journey is all about.
This is just ideal panda habitat.
This is what pandas live for.
We're about 8,000, 9,000 feet up, and you got this great bamboo forest, and you got this huge over-story of old growth trees.
While everything here may look wild it's not.
This young giant panda is the product of a multi-million-dollar project designed to return these animals to the wild.
It's part of a brand-new science called re-wilding.
Only recently has this dream become a real possibility.
For decades, even breeding pandas was almost impossible.
But now it seems they've cracked it.
Can I get near these guys? These 14 babies are the result of millions of dollars' worth of research.
I don't even dare touch one.
In facilities right here, they've painstakingly studied wild behavior to figure out when a female becomes most fertile, and are combining this with cutting-edge fertility treatment.
For most of the world, breeding pandas in captivity is the real challenge.
But it turns out that these guys here in China have really cracked that code.
But breeding pandas is only half the challenge.
It's not how to get them to breed that's the hard part anymore.
The hard part is, how you get them to go back into the wild? Because when they're like this, it's hard to even comprehend that this is a wild animal.
This is just cuteness in a ball.
That's what it is.
But how do you get a captive animal that's almost become a cuddly toy to rediscover its wild instincts and survive in their true home? That's the real challenge now.
It's an epic undertaking that even makes breeding pandas look like child's play.
If you're a panda in this place, one thing is certain.
[Whirring.]
Someone is watching you.
The scientists are using a Big Brother-style surveillance system to assess the young pandas survival skills-- how well they climb, how successful they are at finding water, and how efficiently they seek out the best bamboo.
Whichever panda can prove itself the most wild will be chosen to be returned to their wild home.
So you guys keep track of these guys 24 hours a day, day and night? Yeah.
And, uh, we-- All these are different cameras? Different cameras.
So you are all the time, essentially, testing them as a way of trying to select which one is going to graduate.
And graduation day is almost here.
Two years of relentless work, massive investments-- it's all about to pay off.
Look at this one.
I'm going to be here for a truly historic moment-- to see the first captive-born female panda in history go back into the wild.
But for pandas, it's not quite the wild it used to be.
More than ever, they now have to share these mountains, their home, with people.
And figuring out how wild animals and people can coexist is a problem that scientists like me are trying to solve the world over.
Here in Tanzania, solving how people and chimpanzees can live side-by-side has become a matter of life and death.
Researchers have come up with a daring plan to help humans and animals share the same space.
Because here villages cut into what was once dense forest.
As the chimps patrol this stark frontier between our world and theirs, danger arises on both sides.
You only have to step into the edge of this forest to see what chimpanzees are really capable of.
[Chimps screeching.]
These chimps have formed a hunting party.
Another primate is what they're after-- a red colobus monkey.
[Screeching.]
The hunt is strategic.
It's highly organized.
[Grunting and screeching.]
Relentless.
But this hunt isn't just about food.
It's currency used to establish power [Screeching.]
and mating rights.
Against this backdrop, I feel like a primate way down the pecking order.
Man: Just give them respectful space so they can come by.
Luckily, I'm with someone who has earned a little bit of respect in these forests.
Primatologist Dr.
Jane Goodall.
I almost feel apologetic when I'm in their space.
- Well, she didn't have to come here.
- Hmm? She didn't have to pass us.
She could've gone somewhere else.
- Or gone on a tree.
- Yeah.
They don't mind us.
We're part of the landscape.
Oh, there they are.
50 years ago, Jane made this forest her home, and she knows these chimps like members of her own family.
So tell me a little bit about body language.
With chimpanzees, gestures are analogous to our gestures.
Absolutely, they are.
I mean, how about this one? What's that? Oh, just hugging each other.
- Oh, you were also-- - What do you think? It is reassuring.
It's a hug.
It's friends meeting each other kind of thing.
- Hmm? - Go on chewing.
Oh.
Really, push it out.
They do sometimes.
Flo used to.
- To get the food? - Yeah.
[Chuckles.]
So now I'm supposed to spit my food at you? No, you don't spit.
'Cause I put my lip right up.
[Chuckles.]
Gently push it in.
[Laughs.]
That's what they do.
But today the chimps that Jane knows so well are struggling.
Sanjayan: They're off, huh? Goodall: They're off.
Yep.
Okay, let's go after them.
Okay.
Jane knows these chimpanzees will die out if they don't somehow connect with other populations.
While the forest may be perfect chimp habitat, the problem is it's surrounded on all sides.
They're penned in by villages and farmland.
Goodall: When I first came, this was all forest.
Just a few clearings.
When people were moved from their huts out in the forest and brought into villages, a lot of land-clearing went on then.
[Men speaking foreign language.]
These animals are so isolated, they can't connect with forests nearby and are unable to breed with other chimps.
And if they can't cross this human frontier, then the effects of inbreeding could easily finish them off.
And there are problems for the villagers, too.
With chimps so close to people, things can play out badly.
Goodall: There were a few bad encounters between people and chimpanzees.
Yes.
Definitely, I know about a few.
Sanjayan: When you say "bad encounters", you mean people killing chimps or chimpanzees killing people? No, chimpanzees taking babies.
Twice.
Their favorite food is primates.
In order to solve these problems, Jane has come up with a plan.
And it has to work quickly.
It might only take a few decades for inbreeding to become a real problem.
You see, I look at it this way-- I'm going to fight so that in ten years' time, there is something to save.
Jane's plan doesn't exclude the villagers.
Far from it.
Instead, she's working with them, subsidizing farmers to plant trees at the edge of their land-- trees that provide wooded corridors to connect the chimps here with new mates outside of their forest.
These patches of new habitat help people as well, providing firewood and hopefully reducing danger by diverting chimps away from the villages.
Is it the new reality that we're living in? Is there a new reality of what wilderness is? Where we're trying to now engineer wildlife corridors, patches of habitat? I think there's a new reality of how to protect the wilderness.
If you look at a landscape like this, the trees are coming back, birds are coming back, and so in a way the wilderness is coming back, but a different kind of wilderness.
Jane's new wilderness is already paying off.
Just recently, a chimpanzee from another territory has made its way in-- proof that the corridors really are working.
And this one chimpanzee coming in from outside is really like a vindication.
It can happen.
That's pretty extraordinary.
I didn't know that someone had made it in.
It's very new.
It's just in the last three, four months.
- Wow.
- I was very excited when I heard that.
Sanjayan: A chimp actually made it into Gombe from outside, from far away, somehow managed to get in here across essentially a sea of humanity.
And I love that.
That is what makes it clear that there's possibilities.
Some chimp managed to find a way into Gombe.
And if one can do it, more can do it.
Little bit of help from humans, and more can do it.
Here, there is a new relationship between people and animals, and it works.
As we are pushed closer to our wild neighbors, sometimes surprising dependencies are revealed even in the most extreme circumstances.
In the Sundarbans forests of Bangladesh, people have made their homes alongside man-eaters.
In these mangroves forests, every year up to 50 people die from tiger attacks.
Translator: I wouldn't want anyone to go through what I have been through.
Sanjayan: Last year, Aparba went with his father to collect grass for their cows.
Translator: While we were cutting the grass, dad said, "I feel tired.
Let me have a break and a cigarette.
You keep going.
" The tiger was in the bushes, lying there, hidden.
[Tiger roars.]
It tried to grab him by the neck.
His head had gone all the way into its mouth.
Sanjayan: Aparba's father died before they could get home.
Translator: I felt so angry and thought that if the tiger came at us again, I am willing to face it, even if it means risking my own life.
Sanjayan: Aparba's story is a common one because, despite the dangers, people still do venture into the mangroves to catch fish, collect honey and cut timber.
The tension here is inevitable, because this is the single largest forest resource in a nation of 150 million people.
But surprisingly, that tension keeps this forest healthy.
[Bird squawks.]
And this man knows it.
Iqbal Hoosain is a scientist whose studies relate to a unique area-- fear.
And what he's discovered is remarkable.
I've been out with researchers before, and usually the risks are from something else.
It's never from the thing you're studying itself.
But here-- here it's different.
What lives here, and what we're after here, really does turn around and kill people all the time.
I mean, every week, on average, someone in these forests gets killed by a tiger.
[Speaking foreign language.]
Are those tiger tracks? Hoosain: Yes, I think so.
Tiger tracks.
I mean, right there.
I mean, look at that.
That is as if I just made those prints a few seconds ago.
Stop.
Just very fresh.
So you have to be very careful.
Oh, bloody hell.
Yeah, it's really deep.
You have to be very careful.
Bloody hell! That-- You know what? I'm actually stuck right now.
I can see why tigers kill people here.
They just wait till you're stuck, and then-- It is pretty thick mud.
Look, actually-- look right there.
Yeah, yeah.
Right there.
Tiger.
- Tiger hair, right? - Yes.
- Look at that.
- It is.
See? Orange-tinted on the end.
Yeah, it is.
It is.
Orange-tinted tiger fur.
It is.
[Snarling.]
Do you hear that? Yes, something is, uh-- maybe a boat going there on this side here.
Maybe a boat over there.
Either a boat or someone or a tiger.
The fear and stress that the people feel here is born out of this extreme environment.
Trees extrude salt from their leaves to survive.
One theory is that the same salt dehydrates the tigers, making them more ferocious than elsewhere.
Some believe the huge tides wash away the scent markers, meaning that the only way tigers can claim territory is with brute force.
And the most unsettling idea of all comes down to the storms and cyclones that regularly batter this region.
All this sets the stage for what scientists like Iqbal call an ecology of fear.
It's a key part of our natural world, although here it plays out with a human twist.
It works on every level.
Crabs dive down into underground burrows to evade predators.
Mudskippers intimidate one another for mating rights and territory.
And the one animal that keeps everything on edge-- the tiger.
What's important here is that fear actually protects this forest.
Deer, for example, are kept skittish, and that prevents them from over-grazing a single area.
And it's obvious to see why.
[Birds squawking.]
What Iqbal's found, and what makes this ecology of fear unique, is that it also reaches humans.
Our fear of man-eaters limits how often and how far we venture into the Sundarbans.
This means the forest does not get over-exploited.
Iqbal tells me that the local people here get it.
It's still hard for me to believe that people just don't want to get rid of the tiger.
So Iqbal takes me to meet the man whose father was recently killed.
Good to meet you.
Now that this has happened, how do you feel about tigers? [Speaking in foreign language.]
Translator: My dad died because of the tiger.
I won't get him back again.
But when I had time to think about it, the tiger is doing just what it does.
When I travel through the forest, I see it changing.
Trees are disappearing.
Now I feel we need tigers.
Without tigers, there is no forest.
Sanjayan: There's no doubt in a place like this, people are driven into the forest, into the mangroves, because of need.
But what gives you some hope, what gives me some hope, is that even here, under the most extraordinarily difficult circumstances, there are people who exhibit incredible levels of tolerance, even after they have personally been attacked by tigers.
By sharing their home with a man-eating predator, these people here aren't just showing tolerance, but also a remarkable appreciation of the big picture.
This is not just about over-exploiting the forest.
Around half of Bangladesh's 150 million people live no more than 35 feet above sea level.
And many scientists consider mangroves to be a buffer against storms and cyclones, and able to absorb as much as 40% of the force of a tsunami.
Man-eating tigers are guardians of this forest and, in turn, protect a nation of millions.
Understanding how we're connected and even protected by the natural world is often more complex than it may first appear.
Across the border in India, they only discovered the importance of one animal after it was too late.
[Car horns honking.]
It's surprising that the natural system should break down here, because in India, animals have a unique status.
People live cheek-by-jowl with them in their millions.
Men go to town on elephants.
[Speaking foreign language.]
Monkeys share temples with people.
Cows in particular are held in the highest regard.
There are 280 million of them here in India.
But because they're sacred, they're rarely eaten.
And they're free to wander the markets as equals.
The vast number of these animals never posed a problem before.
But it does now.
When cows die, their carcasses are dragged into the countryside.
That used to be the last anyone really thought about it.
But then, over the course of a decade, the natural system that disposed of the dead animals completely collapsed with catastrophic consequences.
In hundreds of communities like this, the disposal of these big animal carcasses is a huge problem, and being in middle of it is truly horrific.
I mean, it just takes your breath away in lots of different ways.
And all of this because of the loss of one animal.
The vulture.
[Squawking.]
This scavenger is an unlikely hero because they're nature's perfect undertaker.
These animals can strip 200 pounds of rotting flesh from a carcass in 20 minutes flat.
Powerful acids in their stomachs neutralize just about any health hazard, from botulism to anthrax.
But animals that once flocked to the Indian sub-continent have virtually disappeared.
It took just ten years for vulture numbers to plummet by a staggering 98%.
And without vultures, the fetid carcasses spread disease.
And feral dogs thrive.
There are now 25 million dogs in India, the largest population of stray carnivores in the world.
And with feral dogs comes rabies, which kills 20,000 people a year here, more than anywhere else in the world.
[Dogs barking.]
And while all this was happening, no one knew why the vultures were disappearing.
Scientists like Dr.
Vibhu Prakash were part of a decade-long global effort to try to find the answer.
Finally, they linked the vultures' death back to a common veterinary drug used on the cows.
It turned out to be just about the only thing vultures couldn't handle.
The drug is called diclofenac.
A vulture-- all it has to do is encounter diclofenac once in its life, and it will kill it.
Vibhu and the scientific community lobbied successfully to have the drug banned.
And now, working with others, he is on an urgent mission to bring the vultures back.
Not just breeding them but, just like the giant pandas, retraining their wild instincts-- something that scientists are now doing with other scavengers across the world.
[Chirping.]
The vultures that Vibhu is returning to the wild are part of a breeding network that stretches to the highest peaks of the Himalayas where the animals are making a comeback.
It's incredible to think that even today, in our age, in the most populated part of our planet, that a pretty maligned and really underappreciated bird can still play such a big role.
And where that appreciation is growing, that role, that service that this bird plays, is starting to come back.
I'm coming to these mountains for a unique experience.
Only in the air can you appreciate how perfect these animals are for the function they perform.
If you really want to understand the vulture, you gotta be up here in his own element, seeing how they soar and how they use these thermals to fly.
And that's what tells you how great these animals are at finding food and covering vast distances.
This Egyptian vulture uses a six-foot wingspan to catch thermal air currents that can keep them on the wing for most of the day, on the lookout for carcasses.
And their heads are always turning, constantly looking.
They have such fantastic eyesight.
They can see a dead carcass four miles away.
He can spot that.
But not only that, he can spot other vultures as well.
So these vultures act like sentinels across these mountains.
That's how they can cover such great distances when there is prey available.
When vultures filled the sky, it's no wonder there wasn't any dead animal problem.
Oh, my God.
I'm eye level with an Egyptian vulture.
Ohh! Look at that go! Now, for the first time in 20 years, vulture numbers are on the rise.
And they can continue the lifesaving services they provide.
And now new research takes this understanding of the dependency between humans and animals to a planetary level.
Strange, maligned and even dangerous animals actually do something for us.
All over the world there's a new understanding about our dependency on the wild.
And this even extends to the big carnivores.
Because without them, ecosystems we depend on can break down.
Across Africa, predators like lions and leopards have always been feared as a danger to livestock and people.
But we also gain from keeping them around.
They keep wild herds on the move, preventing landscapes from being overgrazed and turned to desert.
And there are other surprising connections emerging, even affecting education.
In some communities, baboon numbers have spiraled out of control.
They have become a pest, raiding farms.
School kids even have to miss classes just to protect their land.
[Screeching.]
Predators like leopards can keep those baboons in check.
[Squeals.]
They restore the predator-prey balance.
And kids can get back to their studies.
And it's not just in far-flung places that we need predators.
[Grunting.]
Even in the US suburbs, human development is making a little space for the comeback of a big cat that used to thrive here.
The panther.
By keeping the numbers of animals like raccoons in check, panthers limit the spread of fatal parasites into human populations.
An alliance where we help predators can also help us.
It was once thought that lyme disease was spread by ticks that bred primarily on deer.
But we now know that the animals that most often play host to this disease when it first develops are mice.
[Kids chattering.]
And it's hawks that keep the rodents in check.
Across America, we're coming to a new appreciation of the wild.
The bats in this colony thrive at a sweltering 90 degrees fahrenheit-- perfect for Mexican freetail bats that are about to invade one of our cities.
They have come here to breed, making a home for themselves under the Congress Avenue Bridge in the heart of Austin, Texas.
It's July, and all the young bats are preparing for their first flight.
[Squeaking.]
They have just 39 feet, or 1 1/2 seconds, to figure out how to fly before they hit the water.
It seems these young bats have got the art of flying just fine-- all 1 1/2 million of them.
Just a few years ago, people were terrified that clouds of bats were threatening their city with disease.
They wanted them exterminated.
But then scientists revealed what was really going on.
In fact, as the bats fan across the city, they feed each night, consuming around 30,000 pounds of insects.
Bats provide a service across the United States that is worth $22 billion a year for agriculture.
Does that mean that every species of animal needs to have a specific value to us if is to survive in the new wild? Back in the misty mountains of Central China, one animal isn't saving us millions of dollars, but costing millions.
This is a part of arguably the single biggest wildlife project in history, re-wilding the giant panda.
It's not just the science of breeding them.
It is also about creating new forest habitat.
And in China, they're planting thousands of acres.
Right now, Director Zhang Hemin-- or Papa Panda, as he's known here-- is in the final stages of picking which of the pandas has proved itself the most wild.
Whichever does will be chosen to go back into these mountains.
Preparing these captive pandas for life in the wild is an immense challenge.
Papa Panda and his team have discovered they can unlock wild instincts in captive-born babies.
And the key is the mother.
Papa Panda has discovered how to encourage the mothers to teach the cubs all the wild skills they need to survive.
Nothing must escape his watchful eye.
Any failures could mean death in the wild.
He watches as the babies learn essential skills, like how to select the best bamboo.
Or when to chase off animals, like this nosey civet cat.
And how to climb high out of harm's way to avoid predators they may meet in the wild, like snow leopards and black bears.
She's really encouraging the baby to come up.
That's right.
It's just one day.
She's really, really showing her.
The mother knows climbing can be dangerous and that getting it right is all in the details, like learning how to avoid dead branches.
Giant pandas are born survivors, and Director Zhang knows that, with the right training, they can have a future in the wild.
Once the babies graduate from the small enclosures, then it's off to the big leagues.
Here, they've essentially turned over the side of a mountain to replicate the challenges of the wild.
Even a one-year-old needs a 40-hectare enclosure.
These pandas must lose all contact with their human caretakers.
And that's why Papa Panda has to enforce a strict staff uniform.
And there's no avoiding it.
I have to fall in line.
It's been kind of a dream of mine to do this in public.
All right, here I go.
It smells a little like panda, too.
[Laughs.]
Clearly, this suit has been worn before.
You usually put panda urine and feces on the clothes? Right.
I think they got carried away with this one.
Director, we could go rob a bank now.
Okay.
Okay? Shall we? Two pandas hug.
[Laughing.]
Two pandas hugging! As ridiculous as this looks, the suits don't need to be perfect.
Their sense of smell is far more important.
This panda is in the final stages of its training and is showing all the right wild instincts for passing Papa Panda's test.
Clearly its mother has done a great job.
This panda still has to undergo months more of wild training.
Although one panda is ready.
The first female panda in history to go back into the wild.
[All speaking foreign language.]
Sanjayan: Oh, here she goes.
Oh, go ahead.
Step into the wild.
Here she comes.
Here she comes.
Oh, my God.
[Cameras snapping photos.]
The fact she is running away from people is exactly what Papa Panda wants.
Come on.
He can't help but just go, "Ahh.
" It's, like, all your training as a biologist, years of practice, and then the panda comes out, and you just melt.
Her name is Zhang Xiang, which means "Hope", and it makes perfect sense.
She's the embodiment of hope.
You know, I've been studying conservation all my life, and I honestly never thought I would see-- never thought I would see a wild panda going into the wild.
That's right.
You gotta get a high-five.
For the first time, Zhang Xiang can roam her forest.
She's home.
She can now benefit from thousands of restored acres of forest.
Here, pandas can feed off a diverse range of bamboo alongside an intricate web of predators and prey, each with their role to play.
But humans benefit from all this new habitat as well.
The forests supply and regulate freshwater for the thousands of people living in the valley below-- a benefit that stretches to the millions living in cities downstream.
This panda re-wilding project is awe-inspiring.
And maybe that's the panda's most important role.
The power of this animal to make us do great things.
You cannot come here and not be inspired.
I searched for inspiration all my life.
It's hard to go out there and, with a straight face, tell people there's a way forward.
And so you look, you look hard for those little signs, those little moments that give you that glimmer.
You come here, it blows you away.
Because here, they're putting the wild back into nature.
Coming up in just a few seconds on Earth A New Wild Earth's great plains are endangered.
But now radical new ideas show us how you can have humans, healthy grasslands and wildlife all in the same place.
And it turns out that one of the keys are the deadliest predators on Earth.
Nowhere on Earth will you find such concentrations of big mammals all fighting to survive than here, on the plains of Africa.
And apart from humans, it's hard to think of an animal that has more impact than the elephant.
Elephants were once able to migrate throughout Africa.
But today, human developments have cut off migration routes, and these giants are now fenced into smaller and smaller parcels of land.
In the reserve beneath my helicopter, wildlife managers are tracking rogue bull elephants.
These bulls are invaders to this land destroying property and threatening people and other wildlife.
Our goal is to relocate them before it's too late.
If we don't manage to get to them and move them in time, then the authorities have no choice but to kill them.
We've spotted one of the invaders.
We need to tranquilize him.
[Indistinct radio chatter.]
[Elephant trumpets.]
Good shot.
All done.
Yep.
Elsewhere in Africa, the issue they face is elephant poaching.
But in Southern Africa, they have the opposite problem.
Too many elephants and not enough land.
Sanjayan: The truth of the matter is, in countries like South Africa today, the available habitat, for the most part, is already occupied.
South Africa's parks and reserves now have nearly 20,000 elephants.
And managers think that's already too many.
This bull is lucky.
There's a reserve 100 miles away that has space.
But in South Africa and elsewhere, managers sometimes have to take even more extreme measures in the name of conservation.
When too many elephants gather in one place, they can severely overgraze the land.
[Elephants trumpeting.]
Then, if the rains fail, the grassland becomes desert.
As a result, everything starves, elephants included.
To prevent this from happening, wildlife managers have sometimes taken the most drastic action of all-- culling.
In the past, we've culled tens of thousands of elephants in the name of management.
And recently, we've decided to start killing again.
[Bird squawking.]
The practice of culling started because of the research of men like Allan Savory.
50 years ago, Allan's recommendations helped lead the first mass cull of 40,000 elephants in Zimbabwe.
Since then, Allan has dedicated his life to a controversial new theory that could not only make culling unnecessary, it could revolutionize the way in which we live on the plains.
You're traveling with your bodyguard.
[Laughs.]
Savory: I love them more than any animal.
- Elephants? - Oh, yeah.
Why do you love them more than any animal? Just because I was so excited about them as a young man.
I loved hunting elephants, I loved being with elephants, I loved studying elephants.
And very early in my career, I decided to specialize on elephants because I loved them so much.
You were part of a game department that used to do a lot of culling of elephants.
Yeah.
- Large numbers? - Yeah.
And that started from my research that was faulty.
I was wrong.
Because I-- - You were wrong? - Yeah, because I-- I was taught that if there's damage to trees and grass and everything, it's too many animals.
Reducing animals, however-- killing over 40,000 elephants-- didn't fix the problem.
The grasslands continued to turn into desert.
Well, reducing the animal numbers, it got worse, it didn't get better.
This led Allan to a radical idea, the opposite of what everyone, myself included, believes.
Now what I'm saying today is that the solution is more animals, properly managed.
Allan bases his theory on the historical fact that once, much, much larger herds dominated these plains.
And they did so without overgrazing.
But how? Allan believes it has to do with how these animals used to move.
Harassed by much larger numbers of predators, including humans, the herds kept bunched together, trampling the ground like a giant plough.
Allan decided to test his theory on his own ranch.
First he gathered all the cows he could find.
But then, instead of just letting them roam free, heerd them into a tight bunch and kept them constantly on the move.
He never let them stay in one pasture for more than one week.
If you put cows on it, what are they going to do to the land? We would get lots of trampling, breaking the crust of the soil, lots of dung and urine.
And any gardener would understand that.
'Cause then plants will grow.
If you've got bare ground and its hard, you'd break the surface with a trowel or whatever, and you put mulch and litter on it, and plants grow, and it's no different on this scale.
I see what you're saying.
So when you have this solid, hard, almost concrete-like ground, you put those cows in for a week in large numbers to break it up.
I get this now.
To me, Allan's results are spectacular.
Despite recent drought, he has transformed this ranch from desert to rich grassland.
Today, the grass holds the water, and streams that were dry for decades are flowing again.
Amazingly, Allan already has more cows than most scientists would recommend, and he wants to add even more cows and more wildlife.
Savory: Right now, we are trying to double the animal numbers because we don't have enough animals to keep this grassland healthy.
So you want to put 1,000 cows on this land? - Absolutely.
- And if you did that, and you did that for a few years and I came back here, would I be able to notice the difference? Yes, the land will be even healthier.
And more wildlife, too? Yes.
It's so counter-intuitive! I just kind of want to shake you.
- You know what I'm saying? - Yes.
It really is.
Yeah.
Sanjayan: Until now, many scientists like myself believed that if animals were overgrazing, then the solution is pretty obvious-- reduce their numbers.
But Allan says what we really need in these habitats, in these natural areas that we think are being destroyed by elephants and other animals, is that we need more elephants, not less.
We need more wildlife, not less.
And far more than you can possibly imagine.
Cows or wildlife, it actually may not matter that much.
They just have to behave as if they were being herded by a dangerous predator.
If Allan is right, then we may have to completely rethink life on the plains.
The message is an extraordinarily powerful one, and it could be the best thing, the absolute best thing conservationists ever discovered.
Allan's ideas have already inspired people all over the world.
Increasingly, they're asking one question.
Can you truly have large numbers of animals, thriving grasslands and people all in the same place? Once upon a time, this grassland had it all-- thriving human communities and abundant wildlife.
But no longer.
The great steppe stretches from Europe to China and once supported the vast horse-riding armies of Genghis Khan, as well as huge herds of wildlife.
In fact, one species lived here in greater numbers than even the wildebeests in Africa.
Incredibly, few people today have even herd of them.
The saiga antelope is a relic of the ice age that once wandered alongside woolly mammoths.
Their extraordinary nose heats air in the winter and filters out dust in the summer-- [Grunting.]
Perfect adaptations for the dry steppe.
As they migrate, they eat over 100 plant species.
Unfortunately, their horns are so valuable as Chinese medicine that after the breakup of the Soviet Union, un-policed poaching reduced the saiga herds in this region from 2 million to only 20,000.
Scientist Aline Kuhl hopes her research into saiga reproduction can help us protect one of the fastest-declining species on Earth.
There's no one large mammal that's declined as fast as the saiga has in recent times.
They've declined by over 95% in ten years.
That's a hell of a lot.
According to Allan Savory's theory, if you reduce the number of saiga, there won't be enough animals left to graze and trample the grassland.
Without the saiga, certain grasses are dying.
Shockingly, over the past few decades, 80% of Kalmykia is turning into desert.
Some say it's the first man-made desert in Europe.
While uncontrolled sheep-grazing habits caused the bulk of that desertification, Savory's theory suggests that native saiga would help restore the balance to these plains.
[Grunting.]
With the saiga headed for extinction, every breeding season is now critical.
Rarely filmed before, this is the saiga rutting season.
Females are sexually mature in just eight months.
Males mature only when they grow their horns.
This adolescent male barely has his, and she is not impressed.
She is focused on the outcome of a much more serious duel.
She belongs to this male, but only so long as he can defend his right to mate against a line-up of challengers.
[Grunting.]
Before battle he marks his scent everywhere.
Males get so exhausted in the rut that as many as 90% of them will die in the winter that follows.
The triumphant old boy rounds up his love interests.
It's not just one.
He's got a harem of up to 50 to look after.
The rut is the first step in a process that could hold the key to the saiga's recovery.
It's spring now, and Aline hopes to find pregnant females who are about to give birth.
One clue to finding them is the grass itself.
Here in the birthing grounds, its lush and rich.
I think I just saw a little calf with its mother already on its legs, so that's looking very good.
Remarkably, female saiga all give birth here within a few days of each other.
We aren't sure how they perform this amazing act of coordination, but as a survival strategy, it's brilliant.
There's a limit to how many babies a predator can eat in just a few days.
The saiga mothers run away from Aline.
Only hours old, the babies can't run.
Good.
But they have another way to avoid detection.
Right.
It looks like we've got a saiga cub or two.
So we're just gonna approach him from behind.
Remaining motionless, they slow their heartbeats to a nearly imperceptible level.
I'm picking him up to take a look.
They really are very, very cute.
Saiga are really very unique because they have twins, and very frequently so.
Their mother will have been probably two years or older.
And they can really-- their population can double just in one year.
So seeing twins here makes me very happy.
There is a chance for them to recover.
They may be one of the fastest declining species on Earth.
But because of the speed with which they can reproduce, they could also be one of the fastest to recover.
Anti-poaching teams are starting to have an impact.
With protection from humans, the great steppe could once again support large herds of saiga, and their presence can help restore these grasslands back to health.
I think people, in partnership with wild herds, could be the key to the future of the plains.
Are you ready? I think I'm ready for this.
And I've found the most incredible example of this here, in the Arctic.
[Engines start.]
Across Canada, Russia and Northern Europe, millions of reindeer roam the northernmost plains on Earth, known as the tundra.
Like the saiga, their grazing is what helps keep this land healthy and diverse.
But here in Norway, about half of the reindeer are in an extraordinary partnership with people.
For centuries, the Sami have made their living alongside the reindeer.
Reindeer provide food, clothing and meat.
The Sami don't fence or regularly feed these deer, so they aren't domestic.
But they're not completely wild, either.
May Torril has brought me 30 miles out of town to the plain where her herd spends the winter.
The deer survive here by digging for lichens under the snow.
May's family has been migrating along with this herd for centuries.
[Grunting.]
Ohh.
The weather, it's perfect.
Aren't you cold? No.
Are you? Freezing! [Laughs.]
What do you think it is? Minus what? Minus 20.
And that's good weather? That's good.
Like saiga, male reindeer fight so hard for the right to mate, they can exhaust themselves and die over winter.
[Speaking foreign language.]
One solution is to castrate a number of the males.
The Sami say the first reindeer herder was the first person who castrated a male deer.
Sanjayan: Does he know what's going to happen? No, I don't think so.
He would be struggling much more if he knew.
Fighting for his life.
[Laughs.]
I'm sure that he's going to survive.
In the autumn, when we have the mating, then I'm sure he's not going to die.
Right.
Here in Kautokeino, scientists are testing to see if traditional methods of castration are better than modern methods.
He's going to use the traditional method, which they're bringing back now, and he's going to sort of semi-castrate this young male caribou by biting the testicles.
Yes.
Are you getting ready for this? [Indistinct chatter.]
Oh.
He bites and then he Crushes? Crush with his hands.
[Spits.]
Oh! Wow.
- Is that okay? - Yeah.
That's it? You don't bite them off completely.
- You just crush them.
- Yes.
- Okay.
Let her go? - Yeah.
Okay.
One, two, three.
He's never gonna forget this day.
- No.
- When the vet bit off his testicles.
Modern castration tools would have destroyed this deer's testicles completely.
The Sami believe that biting his testicles means that he is still able to supply a little testosterone enough to stay vigorous.
And he won't waste his energy rutting or mating.
Instead, he will focus his attention on eating and growing huge.
This is especially useful now as climate change alters the weather, increasing the thawing and re-freezing events that bury the lichens under a coat of ice.
That layer of ice is like an armor.
These reindeer can't just dig through it-- except, it turns out, these castrated males.
Those males can punch through the ice, open it up, so that other reindeer can then get to the green stuff below.
The Sami call them the Gentlemen Of The Tundra.
You must try to bite.
No, I don't-- I don't think so.
I wouldn't want to hurt one of your reindeer, - in case I bit too hard.
- Oh.
I've never had practice.
I wouldn't know what the hell I'm doing.
My wife used to say, "Learning by doing.
" [Laughter.]
- Learning by doing.
- Yes.
[Laughs.]
This harsh, frozen tundra makes it impractical to raise domestic animals that depend on you for their every need.
Which is why working with wild animals is such a brilliant way to go.
[Laughs.]
And I think it's going to become even more important in the future.
Sanjayan: When I look at those reindeer, and I look at the people who live alongside them, I think that, in an unpredictable world, a world with climate change, a world where storms and weather events are going to get more and more unpredictable, it's that wildness that is going to give us humans a better shot at charting a future.
All over the world, grasslands evolved with big wild herds and dangerous predators.
So where does that leave us in North America? Today, most of America's great plains are no longer wild.
We have transformed the land into a vast breadbasket that feeds our nation.
With so much land under the plow, the wild prairie is now the most endangered ecosystem in North America.
The endless herds of bison are gone, and the remaining pronghorn antelope struggle on their migration.
These few remaining pockets of wild plains are all we have left to teach us how this magnificent place works.
And here, exciting new developments show that it's not only the big animals that keep a grassland healthy.
Walking across this prairie, you could be fooled into thinking that nobody's home, but the truth is the real action happens beneath my feet.
Stretching out under me is a network of literally miles of tiny tunnels.
This is a prairie dog town.
And these are the builders.
Scientists have recently discovered that these rodents are good for the land.
Like saiga and reindeer, grazing by prairie dogs keeps the grass healthy.
Their digging aerates the soil, and fixes nitrogen.
As a result, grass around a prairie dog town is more diverse and contains more protein than elsewhere.
Once there were five billion prairie dogs.
Oh, my God.
Check him out.
But since 1900, farmers have worked hard to exterminate them believing they're bad for agriculture.
Today, only 5% remain.
And their decline has had an equally dramatic effect on the 200 other species that depend in part on the prairie dog for their own survival.
[Squeaking.]
This includes one animal in particular.
The prairie dog's archenemy-- the black-footed ferret.
90% of this predator's diet is prairie dogs.
Which is why our extermination campaign inadvertently sent the black-footed ferret nearer to extinction than just about any other animal on Earth.
In the 1980s, we had only seven breeding pairs left.
Then the state and federal wildlife services launched a groundbreaking breeding program that now releases up to 200 ferrets into the wild every year.
[Growls.]
The wild population is still only around 500.
This mother has two kits, and it's their first time to the surface since being born three months ago.
In a busy prairie dog town, black-footed ferrets aren't popular.
[Squeaking.]
Here in the open, a prairie dog gives as good as it gets.
With mother ferret down the hole, the prairie dog delivers the killer blow.
Bury her alive.
[Squeaking.]
Time to celebrate.
But, like all ferrets, she is a fantastic digger.
And come nightfall, it's her turn to dance.
[Squeaking.]
With the prairie dogs fast asleep, mother ferret can hunt at her leisure.
She just needs to find a burrow where someone's home.
[Hissing.]
[Rattling.]
Preferably not a rattlesnake.
[Shrieking.]
By bringing back key species like prairie dogs and ferrets, we now have a more complete understanding of how healthy grasslands function.
And the big discovery is that grasslands that have both predators and prey may be healthiest of all.
This was proved when we brought back a much bigger predator that had vanished from the lower 48 states.
In 1995, wildlife managers reintroduced wolves into Yellowstone National Park.
[Howling.]
With a top predator killing in the park again, fear returned, and prey species like elk began to act differently.
[Bellowing.]
Grazing animals like elk used to lazily hang around water.
They devoured trees and shrubs like willows, and trampled the stream banks.
But when the wolves started ambushing them near the watering holes, the elk had to change their tactics.
[Shrieking.]
Now they would stay just long enough to drink before moving across the landscape in bunched herds.
Without lingering elk, the riverbanks and willows had time to recover.
And when willows returned, so did other animals, like beavers.
Beavers built ponds, and suddenly there was less erosion.
And amazingly, Yellowstone's elk herds grew even healthier and stronger in part because the wolves had returned.
Just outside the park, many ranchers feared wolves would kill their livestock.
Bryan Ulring wasn't one of them.
Bryan was inspired by the power that a predator has to transform the landscape.
When Bryan first took over the J Bar L ranch, it was barren and the riverbanks were eroded.
But then, like Allan Savory in Africa, he began to keep his cows bunched and constantly on the move.
And the results have been phenomenal.
Perfect.
Should I help you put it on? - Yeah, please.
- Here, hold this.
To be honest, Bryan, I've spent most of my life trying to avoid riding animals that flee at the slightest sign of danger.
Right, well, just try and keep her between you and the ground, and you'll be doing great.
[Laughs.]
That's good advice.
I've always wanted to meet the cowboy who acts like a wolf.
The instant you ride across Bryan's ranch, you notice this place is different.
On a normal ranch, cows are spread out everywhere, lazily munching grass.
But Bryan's cows are nowhere to be seen.
Until finally And there are your cows.
But they're in this one tiny little spot, even though they've got all of this to roam on.
What's the point of having them so tight right now? See how they're walking around? So they're like a bunch of mobile composting units that are recycling the grass into the ground.
Like a giant agricultural machine? Yeah, it's like the-- I think it's like the world's most perfect farming equipment.
The all-in-one farming equipment.
You got the harvester, the seeder, the fertilizer.
And the water.
And the water, all in one unit.
Which way do you want them, Bryan? We want them to go right up on the hill.
Okay.
But first what we've got to do is get a little bit of motion in them.
Right.
Come on, let's go.
As a conservationist, I sort of hate cows.
Oh, look, they're moving.
- Yeah.
Perfect.
- They're moving.
They're in the right spot.
[Mooing.]
But Bryan has managed to get his cows to fill the role once occupied by bison.
And Bryan plays the wolf.
Together they are restoring this land back to health.
And it's a hard truth that I almost don't want to accept because it feels like a betrayal.
But Bryan's somehow figured out a way to make these cows fit within the ecology of the place, and I think there's something really beautiful about that and something really optimistic.
And what has surprised and thrilled me the most is what's happened to wildlife on Bryan's ranch.
Look at that.
[Chirping.]
Birds, which have become endangered elsewhere, are returning here.
Sanjayan: You know, with curlews, they don't like to land in grass that's basically taller than their legs.
The most amazing of these birds is the sage grouse.
Once, they were a common sight on the Western prairie.
Today, they are almost an endangered species.
[Whistling and drumming.]
Not here, though.
For these extraordinary mating displays, sage grouse require areas of short grass, grass that, in this case, has been grazed by Bryan's cows.
Someone told me that 70% of all Montana's bird species are found in this valley.
I've heard something like 260 species of bird.
Yeah.
That has shocked me.
In a million years, I never thought that cows could be so beneficial for the wildlife that I love.
Ulring: Like right here, here's sage grouse poop right there.
Really? - [Thunder.]
- Whoa! As an ecologist, I was taught that people, and especially their livestock, are the enemy of wildlife.
But my journey from Africa to the Arctic to here in Montana is forcing me to rethink everything I know about conservation.
In some ways, it's a painful process.
Halfway through your life, you don't want to realize that much of what you know is probably wrong.
But I now think that if we apply all that we've learnt, we can have thriving ranches that can benefit wildlife.
And amazingly, that same wildlife can benefit us.
I can see this if I go back to where my journey began.
In Africa, the Rift Valley has been one gigantic cattle ranch for 4,000 years.
And all that time, people like the Maasai have lived cheek-by-jowl with some of the biggest predators on Earth.
Herding cows next to lions has obvious risks.
[Bellowing.]
This cow knows she can't turn her back on the lion.
[Growling.]
But the lioness has a cunning plan.
Faking fear, she lures the cow into a trap.
[Bellowing.]
For a Maasai, every cow is a precious investment.
In years past, Maasai warriors here would've track down these lions and killed them.
But ingenious new ideas are creeping into this ancient culture.
The Maasai of Shompole are pioneering new ways to save lions.
And it seems all their wildlife, lions included, are faring better here than even in the national parks.
It's like a miracle, what's happening here.
I'm really such a skeptic by nature that I just don't want to believe it.
But if I do let myself believe it, then here, in this little eden, we have lots of wildlife.
It should be a national park.
It's that much good stuff.
And yet there are people here as well.
Stephen Kamanga drives his cattle right amongst zebra and wildebeest.
Unlike Montana, Stephen doesn't need to pretend to be a predator to get his cattle bunched up.
[Whistling.]
The Maasai have a brilliant strategy for living alongside lions.
Every night after grazing, Stephen brings his entire herd inside a circular fortress made of thorn bushes, called a boma.
Amazing, huh? These bomas can be built in just a few days, which makes them the perfect home for nomadic herders constantly on the search for the best grass.
Do you know some of these guys' names? Oh, yeah.
I know, I know.
Fine, I'm gonna test you.
What's this one? This one is Sotwa.
- Sotwa? - Yeah.
What does that mean? It's like a cow which has been given by a friend.
Stephen can't relax until all the cows are in and the door is shut.
Once the sun disappears, things start to change really quickly here.
The twilight comes, the wind picks up.
It just starts to blow.
There's an excitement in the air.
And I know what's going on out there.
I know now the lions are waking up.
And then, when the pride is assembled, they will spread out into this landscape and they'll be hunting.
The night belongs to the cats.
You know that, don't you? That's why you're in here.
Listen.
They're all listening to me.
They don't like this talk of lions.
Today, the Shompole Maasai have a remarkable new technology to help them live alongside lions.
While Stephen sleeps next to his cows, his brother John sets out in search of the prides.
John's team has fitted key lions in each pride with a radio collar.
GPS and radio telemetry give John a pretty good idea where the lions are.
They're close by, huh? Yeah, they're very close now.
About 150 meters away from us.
That way? That way? That way.
Following John, the film crew and I get an incredible opportunity to get really close to lions.
Sanjayan: The driver has night-vision goggles on, so he can see.
I can't.
But because we now can see in the dark, essentially-- Ow! Although not that well.
We're able to go out here and look for lions.
For filming, we've brought our own revolutionary technology-- a thermal camera.
It sees only heat, so any warm-blooded creature stands out clearly from the colder background.
Now we can study lion behavior in a way that was previously impossible.
- We are basically trying to see the way the lion is.
- There she is.
Oh, I think we might have spotted her.
Is that just one of them, or are there more? There's at least three lions out there.
[Whispering.]
Now, I can't see anything out here.
For a lion, this landscape is wide open.
They have membranes in the back of their eyes that reflect light, even the slightest light-- the light from starlight, the light from the moon.
It allows them to see at night really well.
Better than the things that they're hunting.
[Bellowing.]
That is amazing.
That is amazing.
[Cows mooing.]
You can really appreciate how these grasslands work.
The lions keep the wild herds bunched together and constantly moving.
The grazers never get a chance to overgraze.
As they move, their hooves plow up the soil.
Stephen and John are grateful to lions for controlling the wild herds in this way.
And now, with new technology, they can keep their cows safe.
We found last year where lions were, like, probably 200 meters away from cows, and we were able to save that situation because we were able to quickly call the herders and say, "The lions are there.
Take away the animals.
" So even though the Maasai are a 1,000-plus-year-old culture in this landscape, technology is still giving you a little bit of a new edge.
It's helping us to move faster in understanding our ecosystem better.
Lions help the Maasai of Shompole manage this grassland.
Lions also generate an income from tourists like me who will pay to see them.
The results are amazing.
Ten years ago, there were only ten lions here.
Now there are 64, and more are being born each year.
So long as the Maasai keep doing what they're doing, I think these cubs have a bright future.
But for me, the real revelation isn't about lions.
It's about the role played by the most dominant species on these plains-- us.
I think that what makes this landscape work is, strangely, paradoxically, the fact that there are people in it.
[Music and singing.]
The Maasai of Shompole have held onto traditions that inspire them to love their cows and love the land itself.
But they've had the courage to change some traditions in order to protect wildlife.
[Mooing.]
Now, with their stewardship, these magnificent grasslands can function in the same way they have for thousands of years.
And that gives me hope.
I'm really on a little bit of a desperate search to find whether there are places where people and nature can still coexist.
And when I find a place like where we are right now, I can almost hardly believe it.
But I think after being here for some time, it really is real.
When you walk with the cattle, when you walk with the Maasai here, this is somehow a landscape that has moved beyond conservation.
In other words, this is a place that doesn't need the likes of myself.
And I'm pretty happy about that.
I've been fortunate to meet some of the people pioneering a whole new understanding of the world's great plains.
These are the architects of the new wild.
They are better off because they have learned to form unique partnerships with some of the most incredible animals on Earth.
When you realize that, you realize the potential that humans have to not just destroy places, but also to save them, to keep them productive and functional, and that this notion that we are somehow separate from nature is forever banished from your thoughts, that we both can live in the same space.
That's pretty damn cool.
[Squeaking.]
Next time on Earth A New Wild Forests.
I discover how we can live alongside the most diverse ecosystem on Earth, meeting the people, facing up to the wildlife, I want to find a way to value forests whilst they're still standing.
Announcer: To learn more about this program, visit pbs.
org/earthanewwild Earth: A New Wild is available on Blu-Ray and DVD.
To order, visit shoppbs.
org or call 1-800-play-pbs
Yet one species is always framed out of the picture.
Us.
I'm Dr.
M.
Sanjayan.
As a scientist and conservationist, I've dedicated the past 25 years of my life to studying and protecting the wildlife I love.
Hold on, buddy! [Screams and laughs.]
Now, my mission is to tell you an untold story, where we humans are not separate from nature.
We are part of it.
I'm going to the frontiers of where man and animals meet.
And here I'm discovering just how much we need each other to survive.
Oh, wow.
This is a place where elephants police rainforests.
And man-eating tigers actually protect a nation of millions.
Even the most unlikely creatures are crucial to our survival.
This is the future where humans and wildlife are adapting and thriving side-by-side.
There it is.
Our home is changing.
Amazing, huh? Now there's a new kind of wild.
February 3rd, 2015 The Min Mountains in China are home to one of the most famous animals on Earth, and one of the rarest.
Here an exciting future is taking shape, one that shows how sharing our home with wild neighbors brings benefits for both them and us.
And that's what my journey is all about.
This is just ideal panda habitat.
This is what pandas live for.
We're about 8,000, 9,000 feet up, and you got this great bamboo forest, and you got this huge over-story of old growth trees.
While everything here may look wild it's not.
This young giant panda is the product of a multi-million-dollar project designed to return these animals to the wild.
It's part of a brand-new science called re-wilding.
Only recently has this dream become a real possibility.
For decades, even breeding pandas was almost impossible.
But now it seems they've cracked it.
Can I get near these guys? These 14 babies are the result of millions of dollars' worth of research.
I don't even dare touch one.
In facilities right here, they've painstakingly studied wild behavior to figure out when a female becomes most fertile, and are combining this with cutting-edge fertility treatment.
For most of the world, breeding pandas in captivity is the real challenge.
But it turns out that these guys here in China have really cracked that code.
But breeding pandas is only half the challenge.
It's not how to get them to breed that's the hard part anymore.
The hard part is, how you get them to go back into the wild? Because when they're like this, it's hard to even comprehend that this is a wild animal.
This is just cuteness in a ball.
That's what it is.
But how do you get a captive animal that's almost become a cuddly toy to rediscover its wild instincts and survive in their true home? That's the real challenge now.
It's an epic undertaking that even makes breeding pandas look like child's play.
If you're a panda in this place, one thing is certain.
[Whirring.]
Someone is watching you.
The scientists are using a Big Brother-style surveillance system to assess the young pandas survival skills-- how well they climb, how successful they are at finding water, and how efficiently they seek out the best bamboo.
Whichever panda can prove itself the most wild will be chosen to be returned to their wild home.
So you guys keep track of these guys 24 hours a day, day and night? Yeah.
And, uh, we-- All these are different cameras? Different cameras.
So you are all the time, essentially, testing them as a way of trying to select which one is going to graduate.
And graduation day is almost here.
Two years of relentless work, massive investments-- it's all about to pay off.
Look at this one.
I'm going to be here for a truly historic moment-- to see the first captive-born female panda in history go back into the wild.
But for pandas, it's not quite the wild it used to be.
More than ever, they now have to share these mountains, their home, with people.
And figuring out how wild animals and people can coexist is a problem that scientists like me are trying to solve the world over.
Here in Tanzania, solving how people and chimpanzees can live side-by-side has become a matter of life and death.
Researchers have come up with a daring plan to help humans and animals share the same space.
Because here villages cut into what was once dense forest.
As the chimps patrol this stark frontier between our world and theirs, danger arises on both sides.
You only have to step into the edge of this forest to see what chimpanzees are really capable of.
[Chimps screeching.]
These chimps have formed a hunting party.
Another primate is what they're after-- a red colobus monkey.
[Screeching.]
The hunt is strategic.
It's highly organized.
[Grunting and screeching.]
Relentless.
But this hunt isn't just about food.
It's currency used to establish power [Screeching.]
and mating rights.
Against this backdrop, I feel like a primate way down the pecking order.
Man: Just give them respectful space so they can come by.
Luckily, I'm with someone who has earned a little bit of respect in these forests.
Primatologist Dr.
Jane Goodall.
I almost feel apologetic when I'm in their space.
- Well, she didn't have to come here.
- Hmm? She didn't have to pass us.
She could've gone somewhere else.
- Or gone on a tree.
- Yeah.
They don't mind us.
We're part of the landscape.
Oh, there they are.
50 years ago, Jane made this forest her home, and she knows these chimps like members of her own family.
So tell me a little bit about body language.
With chimpanzees, gestures are analogous to our gestures.
Absolutely, they are.
I mean, how about this one? What's that? Oh, just hugging each other.
- Oh, you were also-- - What do you think? It is reassuring.
It's a hug.
It's friends meeting each other kind of thing.
- Hmm? - Go on chewing.
Oh.
Really, push it out.
They do sometimes.
Flo used to.
- To get the food? - Yeah.
[Chuckles.]
So now I'm supposed to spit my food at you? No, you don't spit.
'Cause I put my lip right up.
[Chuckles.]
Gently push it in.
[Laughs.]
That's what they do.
But today the chimps that Jane knows so well are struggling.
Sanjayan: They're off, huh? Goodall: They're off.
Yep.
Okay, let's go after them.
Okay.
Jane knows these chimpanzees will die out if they don't somehow connect with other populations.
While the forest may be perfect chimp habitat, the problem is it's surrounded on all sides.
They're penned in by villages and farmland.
Goodall: When I first came, this was all forest.
Just a few clearings.
When people were moved from their huts out in the forest and brought into villages, a lot of land-clearing went on then.
[Men speaking foreign language.]
These animals are so isolated, they can't connect with forests nearby and are unable to breed with other chimps.
And if they can't cross this human frontier, then the effects of inbreeding could easily finish them off.
And there are problems for the villagers, too.
With chimps so close to people, things can play out badly.
Goodall: There were a few bad encounters between people and chimpanzees.
Yes.
Definitely, I know about a few.
Sanjayan: When you say "bad encounters", you mean people killing chimps or chimpanzees killing people? No, chimpanzees taking babies.
Twice.
Their favorite food is primates.
In order to solve these problems, Jane has come up with a plan.
And it has to work quickly.
It might only take a few decades for inbreeding to become a real problem.
You see, I look at it this way-- I'm going to fight so that in ten years' time, there is something to save.
Jane's plan doesn't exclude the villagers.
Far from it.
Instead, she's working with them, subsidizing farmers to plant trees at the edge of their land-- trees that provide wooded corridors to connect the chimps here with new mates outside of their forest.
These patches of new habitat help people as well, providing firewood and hopefully reducing danger by diverting chimps away from the villages.
Is it the new reality that we're living in? Is there a new reality of what wilderness is? Where we're trying to now engineer wildlife corridors, patches of habitat? I think there's a new reality of how to protect the wilderness.
If you look at a landscape like this, the trees are coming back, birds are coming back, and so in a way the wilderness is coming back, but a different kind of wilderness.
Jane's new wilderness is already paying off.
Just recently, a chimpanzee from another territory has made its way in-- proof that the corridors really are working.
And this one chimpanzee coming in from outside is really like a vindication.
It can happen.
That's pretty extraordinary.
I didn't know that someone had made it in.
It's very new.
It's just in the last three, four months.
- Wow.
- I was very excited when I heard that.
Sanjayan: A chimp actually made it into Gombe from outside, from far away, somehow managed to get in here across essentially a sea of humanity.
And I love that.
That is what makes it clear that there's possibilities.
Some chimp managed to find a way into Gombe.
And if one can do it, more can do it.
Little bit of help from humans, and more can do it.
Here, there is a new relationship between people and animals, and it works.
As we are pushed closer to our wild neighbors, sometimes surprising dependencies are revealed even in the most extreme circumstances.
In the Sundarbans forests of Bangladesh, people have made their homes alongside man-eaters.
In these mangroves forests, every year up to 50 people die from tiger attacks.
Translator: I wouldn't want anyone to go through what I have been through.
Sanjayan: Last year, Aparba went with his father to collect grass for their cows.
Translator: While we were cutting the grass, dad said, "I feel tired.
Let me have a break and a cigarette.
You keep going.
" The tiger was in the bushes, lying there, hidden.
[Tiger roars.]
It tried to grab him by the neck.
His head had gone all the way into its mouth.
Sanjayan: Aparba's father died before they could get home.
Translator: I felt so angry and thought that if the tiger came at us again, I am willing to face it, even if it means risking my own life.
Sanjayan: Aparba's story is a common one because, despite the dangers, people still do venture into the mangroves to catch fish, collect honey and cut timber.
The tension here is inevitable, because this is the single largest forest resource in a nation of 150 million people.
But surprisingly, that tension keeps this forest healthy.
[Bird squawks.]
And this man knows it.
Iqbal Hoosain is a scientist whose studies relate to a unique area-- fear.
And what he's discovered is remarkable.
I've been out with researchers before, and usually the risks are from something else.
It's never from the thing you're studying itself.
But here-- here it's different.
What lives here, and what we're after here, really does turn around and kill people all the time.
I mean, every week, on average, someone in these forests gets killed by a tiger.
[Speaking foreign language.]
Are those tiger tracks? Hoosain: Yes, I think so.
Tiger tracks.
I mean, right there.
I mean, look at that.
That is as if I just made those prints a few seconds ago.
Stop.
Just very fresh.
So you have to be very careful.
Oh, bloody hell.
Yeah, it's really deep.
You have to be very careful.
Bloody hell! That-- You know what? I'm actually stuck right now.
I can see why tigers kill people here.
They just wait till you're stuck, and then-- It is pretty thick mud.
Look, actually-- look right there.
Yeah, yeah.
Right there.
Tiger.
- Tiger hair, right? - Yes.
- Look at that.
- It is.
See? Orange-tinted on the end.
Yeah, it is.
It is.
Orange-tinted tiger fur.
It is.
[Snarling.]
Do you hear that? Yes, something is, uh-- maybe a boat going there on this side here.
Maybe a boat over there.
Either a boat or someone or a tiger.
The fear and stress that the people feel here is born out of this extreme environment.
Trees extrude salt from their leaves to survive.
One theory is that the same salt dehydrates the tigers, making them more ferocious than elsewhere.
Some believe the huge tides wash away the scent markers, meaning that the only way tigers can claim territory is with brute force.
And the most unsettling idea of all comes down to the storms and cyclones that regularly batter this region.
All this sets the stage for what scientists like Iqbal call an ecology of fear.
It's a key part of our natural world, although here it plays out with a human twist.
It works on every level.
Crabs dive down into underground burrows to evade predators.
Mudskippers intimidate one another for mating rights and territory.
And the one animal that keeps everything on edge-- the tiger.
What's important here is that fear actually protects this forest.
Deer, for example, are kept skittish, and that prevents them from over-grazing a single area.
And it's obvious to see why.
[Birds squawking.]
What Iqbal's found, and what makes this ecology of fear unique, is that it also reaches humans.
Our fear of man-eaters limits how often and how far we venture into the Sundarbans.
This means the forest does not get over-exploited.
Iqbal tells me that the local people here get it.
It's still hard for me to believe that people just don't want to get rid of the tiger.
So Iqbal takes me to meet the man whose father was recently killed.
Good to meet you.
Now that this has happened, how do you feel about tigers? [Speaking in foreign language.]
Translator: My dad died because of the tiger.
I won't get him back again.
But when I had time to think about it, the tiger is doing just what it does.
When I travel through the forest, I see it changing.
Trees are disappearing.
Now I feel we need tigers.
Without tigers, there is no forest.
Sanjayan: There's no doubt in a place like this, people are driven into the forest, into the mangroves, because of need.
But what gives you some hope, what gives me some hope, is that even here, under the most extraordinarily difficult circumstances, there are people who exhibit incredible levels of tolerance, even after they have personally been attacked by tigers.
By sharing their home with a man-eating predator, these people here aren't just showing tolerance, but also a remarkable appreciation of the big picture.
This is not just about over-exploiting the forest.
Around half of Bangladesh's 150 million people live no more than 35 feet above sea level.
And many scientists consider mangroves to be a buffer against storms and cyclones, and able to absorb as much as 40% of the force of a tsunami.
Man-eating tigers are guardians of this forest and, in turn, protect a nation of millions.
Understanding how we're connected and even protected by the natural world is often more complex than it may first appear.
Across the border in India, they only discovered the importance of one animal after it was too late.
[Car horns honking.]
It's surprising that the natural system should break down here, because in India, animals have a unique status.
People live cheek-by-jowl with them in their millions.
Men go to town on elephants.
[Speaking foreign language.]
Monkeys share temples with people.
Cows in particular are held in the highest regard.
There are 280 million of them here in India.
But because they're sacred, they're rarely eaten.
And they're free to wander the markets as equals.
The vast number of these animals never posed a problem before.
But it does now.
When cows die, their carcasses are dragged into the countryside.
That used to be the last anyone really thought about it.
But then, over the course of a decade, the natural system that disposed of the dead animals completely collapsed with catastrophic consequences.
In hundreds of communities like this, the disposal of these big animal carcasses is a huge problem, and being in middle of it is truly horrific.
I mean, it just takes your breath away in lots of different ways.
And all of this because of the loss of one animal.
The vulture.
[Squawking.]
This scavenger is an unlikely hero because they're nature's perfect undertaker.
These animals can strip 200 pounds of rotting flesh from a carcass in 20 minutes flat.
Powerful acids in their stomachs neutralize just about any health hazard, from botulism to anthrax.
But animals that once flocked to the Indian sub-continent have virtually disappeared.
It took just ten years for vulture numbers to plummet by a staggering 98%.
And without vultures, the fetid carcasses spread disease.
And feral dogs thrive.
There are now 25 million dogs in India, the largest population of stray carnivores in the world.
And with feral dogs comes rabies, which kills 20,000 people a year here, more than anywhere else in the world.
[Dogs barking.]
And while all this was happening, no one knew why the vultures were disappearing.
Scientists like Dr.
Vibhu Prakash were part of a decade-long global effort to try to find the answer.
Finally, they linked the vultures' death back to a common veterinary drug used on the cows.
It turned out to be just about the only thing vultures couldn't handle.
The drug is called diclofenac.
A vulture-- all it has to do is encounter diclofenac once in its life, and it will kill it.
Vibhu and the scientific community lobbied successfully to have the drug banned.
And now, working with others, he is on an urgent mission to bring the vultures back.
Not just breeding them but, just like the giant pandas, retraining their wild instincts-- something that scientists are now doing with other scavengers across the world.
[Chirping.]
The vultures that Vibhu is returning to the wild are part of a breeding network that stretches to the highest peaks of the Himalayas where the animals are making a comeback.
It's incredible to think that even today, in our age, in the most populated part of our planet, that a pretty maligned and really underappreciated bird can still play such a big role.
And where that appreciation is growing, that role, that service that this bird plays, is starting to come back.
I'm coming to these mountains for a unique experience.
Only in the air can you appreciate how perfect these animals are for the function they perform.
If you really want to understand the vulture, you gotta be up here in his own element, seeing how they soar and how they use these thermals to fly.
And that's what tells you how great these animals are at finding food and covering vast distances.
This Egyptian vulture uses a six-foot wingspan to catch thermal air currents that can keep them on the wing for most of the day, on the lookout for carcasses.
And their heads are always turning, constantly looking.
They have such fantastic eyesight.
They can see a dead carcass four miles away.
He can spot that.
But not only that, he can spot other vultures as well.
So these vultures act like sentinels across these mountains.
That's how they can cover such great distances when there is prey available.
When vultures filled the sky, it's no wonder there wasn't any dead animal problem.
Oh, my God.
I'm eye level with an Egyptian vulture.
Ohh! Look at that go! Now, for the first time in 20 years, vulture numbers are on the rise.
And they can continue the lifesaving services they provide.
And now new research takes this understanding of the dependency between humans and animals to a planetary level.
Strange, maligned and even dangerous animals actually do something for us.
All over the world there's a new understanding about our dependency on the wild.
And this even extends to the big carnivores.
Because without them, ecosystems we depend on can break down.
Across Africa, predators like lions and leopards have always been feared as a danger to livestock and people.
But we also gain from keeping them around.
They keep wild herds on the move, preventing landscapes from being overgrazed and turned to desert.
And there are other surprising connections emerging, even affecting education.
In some communities, baboon numbers have spiraled out of control.
They have become a pest, raiding farms.
School kids even have to miss classes just to protect their land.
[Screeching.]
Predators like leopards can keep those baboons in check.
[Squeals.]
They restore the predator-prey balance.
And kids can get back to their studies.
And it's not just in far-flung places that we need predators.
[Grunting.]
Even in the US suburbs, human development is making a little space for the comeback of a big cat that used to thrive here.
The panther.
By keeping the numbers of animals like raccoons in check, panthers limit the spread of fatal parasites into human populations.
An alliance where we help predators can also help us.
It was once thought that lyme disease was spread by ticks that bred primarily on deer.
But we now know that the animals that most often play host to this disease when it first develops are mice.
[Kids chattering.]
And it's hawks that keep the rodents in check.
Across America, we're coming to a new appreciation of the wild.
The bats in this colony thrive at a sweltering 90 degrees fahrenheit-- perfect for Mexican freetail bats that are about to invade one of our cities.
They have come here to breed, making a home for themselves under the Congress Avenue Bridge in the heart of Austin, Texas.
It's July, and all the young bats are preparing for their first flight.
[Squeaking.]
They have just 39 feet, or 1 1/2 seconds, to figure out how to fly before they hit the water.
It seems these young bats have got the art of flying just fine-- all 1 1/2 million of them.
Just a few years ago, people were terrified that clouds of bats were threatening their city with disease.
They wanted them exterminated.
But then scientists revealed what was really going on.
In fact, as the bats fan across the city, they feed each night, consuming around 30,000 pounds of insects.
Bats provide a service across the United States that is worth $22 billion a year for agriculture.
Does that mean that every species of animal needs to have a specific value to us if is to survive in the new wild? Back in the misty mountains of Central China, one animal isn't saving us millions of dollars, but costing millions.
This is a part of arguably the single biggest wildlife project in history, re-wilding the giant panda.
It's not just the science of breeding them.
It is also about creating new forest habitat.
And in China, they're planting thousands of acres.
Right now, Director Zhang Hemin-- or Papa Panda, as he's known here-- is in the final stages of picking which of the pandas has proved itself the most wild.
Whichever does will be chosen to go back into these mountains.
Preparing these captive pandas for life in the wild is an immense challenge.
Papa Panda and his team have discovered they can unlock wild instincts in captive-born babies.
And the key is the mother.
Papa Panda has discovered how to encourage the mothers to teach the cubs all the wild skills they need to survive.
Nothing must escape his watchful eye.
Any failures could mean death in the wild.
He watches as the babies learn essential skills, like how to select the best bamboo.
Or when to chase off animals, like this nosey civet cat.
And how to climb high out of harm's way to avoid predators they may meet in the wild, like snow leopards and black bears.
She's really encouraging the baby to come up.
That's right.
It's just one day.
She's really, really showing her.
The mother knows climbing can be dangerous and that getting it right is all in the details, like learning how to avoid dead branches.
Giant pandas are born survivors, and Director Zhang knows that, with the right training, they can have a future in the wild.
Once the babies graduate from the small enclosures, then it's off to the big leagues.
Here, they've essentially turned over the side of a mountain to replicate the challenges of the wild.
Even a one-year-old needs a 40-hectare enclosure.
These pandas must lose all contact with their human caretakers.
And that's why Papa Panda has to enforce a strict staff uniform.
And there's no avoiding it.
I have to fall in line.
It's been kind of a dream of mine to do this in public.
All right, here I go.
It smells a little like panda, too.
[Laughs.]
Clearly, this suit has been worn before.
You usually put panda urine and feces on the clothes? Right.
I think they got carried away with this one.
Director, we could go rob a bank now.
Okay.
Okay? Shall we? Two pandas hug.
[Laughing.]
Two pandas hugging! As ridiculous as this looks, the suits don't need to be perfect.
Their sense of smell is far more important.
This panda is in the final stages of its training and is showing all the right wild instincts for passing Papa Panda's test.
Clearly its mother has done a great job.
This panda still has to undergo months more of wild training.
Although one panda is ready.
The first female panda in history to go back into the wild.
[All speaking foreign language.]
Sanjayan: Oh, here she goes.
Oh, go ahead.
Step into the wild.
Here she comes.
Here she comes.
Oh, my God.
[Cameras snapping photos.]
The fact she is running away from people is exactly what Papa Panda wants.
Come on.
He can't help but just go, "Ahh.
" It's, like, all your training as a biologist, years of practice, and then the panda comes out, and you just melt.
Her name is Zhang Xiang, which means "Hope", and it makes perfect sense.
She's the embodiment of hope.
You know, I've been studying conservation all my life, and I honestly never thought I would see-- never thought I would see a wild panda going into the wild.
That's right.
You gotta get a high-five.
For the first time, Zhang Xiang can roam her forest.
She's home.
She can now benefit from thousands of restored acres of forest.
Here, pandas can feed off a diverse range of bamboo alongside an intricate web of predators and prey, each with their role to play.
But humans benefit from all this new habitat as well.
The forests supply and regulate freshwater for the thousands of people living in the valley below-- a benefit that stretches to the millions living in cities downstream.
This panda re-wilding project is awe-inspiring.
And maybe that's the panda's most important role.
The power of this animal to make us do great things.
You cannot come here and not be inspired.
I searched for inspiration all my life.
It's hard to go out there and, with a straight face, tell people there's a way forward.
And so you look, you look hard for those little signs, those little moments that give you that glimmer.
You come here, it blows you away.
Because here, they're putting the wild back into nature.
Coming up in just a few seconds on Earth A New Wild Earth's great plains are endangered.
But now radical new ideas show us how you can have humans, healthy grasslands and wildlife all in the same place.
And it turns out that one of the keys are the deadliest predators on Earth.
Nowhere on Earth will you find such concentrations of big mammals all fighting to survive than here, on the plains of Africa.
And apart from humans, it's hard to think of an animal that has more impact than the elephant.
Elephants were once able to migrate throughout Africa.
But today, human developments have cut off migration routes, and these giants are now fenced into smaller and smaller parcels of land.
In the reserve beneath my helicopter, wildlife managers are tracking rogue bull elephants.
These bulls are invaders to this land destroying property and threatening people and other wildlife.
Our goal is to relocate them before it's too late.
If we don't manage to get to them and move them in time, then the authorities have no choice but to kill them.
We've spotted one of the invaders.
We need to tranquilize him.
[Indistinct radio chatter.]
[Elephant trumpets.]
Good shot.
All done.
Yep.
Elsewhere in Africa, the issue they face is elephant poaching.
But in Southern Africa, they have the opposite problem.
Too many elephants and not enough land.
Sanjayan: The truth of the matter is, in countries like South Africa today, the available habitat, for the most part, is already occupied.
South Africa's parks and reserves now have nearly 20,000 elephants.
And managers think that's already too many.
This bull is lucky.
There's a reserve 100 miles away that has space.
But in South Africa and elsewhere, managers sometimes have to take even more extreme measures in the name of conservation.
When too many elephants gather in one place, they can severely overgraze the land.
[Elephants trumpeting.]
Then, if the rains fail, the grassland becomes desert.
As a result, everything starves, elephants included.
To prevent this from happening, wildlife managers have sometimes taken the most drastic action of all-- culling.
In the past, we've culled tens of thousands of elephants in the name of management.
And recently, we've decided to start killing again.
[Bird squawking.]
The practice of culling started because of the research of men like Allan Savory.
50 years ago, Allan's recommendations helped lead the first mass cull of 40,000 elephants in Zimbabwe.
Since then, Allan has dedicated his life to a controversial new theory that could not only make culling unnecessary, it could revolutionize the way in which we live on the plains.
You're traveling with your bodyguard.
[Laughs.]
Savory: I love them more than any animal.
- Elephants? - Oh, yeah.
Why do you love them more than any animal? Just because I was so excited about them as a young man.
I loved hunting elephants, I loved being with elephants, I loved studying elephants.
And very early in my career, I decided to specialize on elephants because I loved them so much.
You were part of a game department that used to do a lot of culling of elephants.
Yeah.
- Large numbers? - Yeah.
And that started from my research that was faulty.
I was wrong.
Because I-- - You were wrong? - Yeah, because I-- I was taught that if there's damage to trees and grass and everything, it's too many animals.
Reducing animals, however-- killing over 40,000 elephants-- didn't fix the problem.
The grasslands continued to turn into desert.
Well, reducing the animal numbers, it got worse, it didn't get better.
This led Allan to a radical idea, the opposite of what everyone, myself included, believes.
Now what I'm saying today is that the solution is more animals, properly managed.
Allan bases his theory on the historical fact that once, much, much larger herds dominated these plains.
And they did so without overgrazing.
But how? Allan believes it has to do with how these animals used to move.
Harassed by much larger numbers of predators, including humans, the herds kept bunched together, trampling the ground like a giant plough.
Allan decided to test his theory on his own ranch.
First he gathered all the cows he could find.
But then, instead of just letting them roam free, heerd them into a tight bunch and kept them constantly on the move.
He never let them stay in one pasture for more than one week.
If you put cows on it, what are they going to do to the land? We would get lots of trampling, breaking the crust of the soil, lots of dung and urine.
And any gardener would understand that.
'Cause then plants will grow.
If you've got bare ground and its hard, you'd break the surface with a trowel or whatever, and you put mulch and litter on it, and plants grow, and it's no different on this scale.
I see what you're saying.
So when you have this solid, hard, almost concrete-like ground, you put those cows in for a week in large numbers to break it up.
I get this now.
To me, Allan's results are spectacular.
Despite recent drought, he has transformed this ranch from desert to rich grassland.
Today, the grass holds the water, and streams that were dry for decades are flowing again.
Amazingly, Allan already has more cows than most scientists would recommend, and he wants to add even more cows and more wildlife.
Savory: Right now, we are trying to double the animal numbers because we don't have enough animals to keep this grassland healthy.
So you want to put 1,000 cows on this land? - Absolutely.
- And if you did that, and you did that for a few years and I came back here, would I be able to notice the difference? Yes, the land will be even healthier.
And more wildlife, too? Yes.
It's so counter-intuitive! I just kind of want to shake you.
- You know what I'm saying? - Yes.
It really is.
Yeah.
Sanjayan: Until now, many scientists like myself believed that if animals were overgrazing, then the solution is pretty obvious-- reduce their numbers.
But Allan says what we really need in these habitats, in these natural areas that we think are being destroyed by elephants and other animals, is that we need more elephants, not less.
We need more wildlife, not less.
And far more than you can possibly imagine.
Cows or wildlife, it actually may not matter that much.
They just have to behave as if they were being herded by a dangerous predator.
If Allan is right, then we may have to completely rethink life on the plains.
The message is an extraordinarily powerful one, and it could be the best thing, the absolute best thing conservationists ever discovered.
Allan's ideas have already inspired people all over the world.
Increasingly, they're asking one question.
Can you truly have large numbers of animals, thriving grasslands and people all in the same place? Once upon a time, this grassland had it all-- thriving human communities and abundant wildlife.
But no longer.
The great steppe stretches from Europe to China and once supported the vast horse-riding armies of Genghis Khan, as well as huge herds of wildlife.
In fact, one species lived here in greater numbers than even the wildebeests in Africa.
Incredibly, few people today have even herd of them.
The saiga antelope is a relic of the ice age that once wandered alongside woolly mammoths.
Their extraordinary nose heats air in the winter and filters out dust in the summer-- [Grunting.]
Perfect adaptations for the dry steppe.
As they migrate, they eat over 100 plant species.
Unfortunately, their horns are so valuable as Chinese medicine that after the breakup of the Soviet Union, un-policed poaching reduced the saiga herds in this region from 2 million to only 20,000.
Scientist Aline Kuhl hopes her research into saiga reproduction can help us protect one of the fastest-declining species on Earth.
There's no one large mammal that's declined as fast as the saiga has in recent times.
They've declined by over 95% in ten years.
That's a hell of a lot.
According to Allan Savory's theory, if you reduce the number of saiga, there won't be enough animals left to graze and trample the grassland.
Without the saiga, certain grasses are dying.
Shockingly, over the past few decades, 80% of Kalmykia is turning into desert.
Some say it's the first man-made desert in Europe.
While uncontrolled sheep-grazing habits caused the bulk of that desertification, Savory's theory suggests that native saiga would help restore the balance to these plains.
[Grunting.]
With the saiga headed for extinction, every breeding season is now critical.
Rarely filmed before, this is the saiga rutting season.
Females are sexually mature in just eight months.
Males mature only when they grow their horns.
This adolescent male barely has his, and she is not impressed.
She is focused on the outcome of a much more serious duel.
She belongs to this male, but only so long as he can defend his right to mate against a line-up of challengers.
[Grunting.]
Before battle he marks his scent everywhere.
Males get so exhausted in the rut that as many as 90% of them will die in the winter that follows.
The triumphant old boy rounds up his love interests.
It's not just one.
He's got a harem of up to 50 to look after.
The rut is the first step in a process that could hold the key to the saiga's recovery.
It's spring now, and Aline hopes to find pregnant females who are about to give birth.
One clue to finding them is the grass itself.
Here in the birthing grounds, its lush and rich.
I think I just saw a little calf with its mother already on its legs, so that's looking very good.
Remarkably, female saiga all give birth here within a few days of each other.
We aren't sure how they perform this amazing act of coordination, but as a survival strategy, it's brilliant.
There's a limit to how many babies a predator can eat in just a few days.
The saiga mothers run away from Aline.
Only hours old, the babies can't run.
Good.
But they have another way to avoid detection.
Right.
It looks like we've got a saiga cub or two.
So we're just gonna approach him from behind.
Remaining motionless, they slow their heartbeats to a nearly imperceptible level.
I'm picking him up to take a look.
They really are very, very cute.
Saiga are really very unique because they have twins, and very frequently so.
Their mother will have been probably two years or older.
And they can really-- their population can double just in one year.
So seeing twins here makes me very happy.
There is a chance for them to recover.
They may be one of the fastest declining species on Earth.
But because of the speed with which they can reproduce, they could also be one of the fastest to recover.
Anti-poaching teams are starting to have an impact.
With protection from humans, the great steppe could once again support large herds of saiga, and their presence can help restore these grasslands back to health.
I think people, in partnership with wild herds, could be the key to the future of the plains.
Are you ready? I think I'm ready for this.
And I've found the most incredible example of this here, in the Arctic.
[Engines start.]
Across Canada, Russia and Northern Europe, millions of reindeer roam the northernmost plains on Earth, known as the tundra.
Like the saiga, their grazing is what helps keep this land healthy and diverse.
But here in Norway, about half of the reindeer are in an extraordinary partnership with people.
For centuries, the Sami have made their living alongside the reindeer.
Reindeer provide food, clothing and meat.
The Sami don't fence or regularly feed these deer, so they aren't domestic.
But they're not completely wild, either.
May Torril has brought me 30 miles out of town to the plain where her herd spends the winter.
The deer survive here by digging for lichens under the snow.
May's family has been migrating along with this herd for centuries.
[Grunting.]
Ohh.
The weather, it's perfect.
Aren't you cold? No.
Are you? Freezing! [Laughs.]
What do you think it is? Minus what? Minus 20.
And that's good weather? That's good.
Like saiga, male reindeer fight so hard for the right to mate, they can exhaust themselves and die over winter.
[Speaking foreign language.]
One solution is to castrate a number of the males.
The Sami say the first reindeer herder was the first person who castrated a male deer.
Sanjayan: Does he know what's going to happen? No, I don't think so.
He would be struggling much more if he knew.
Fighting for his life.
[Laughs.]
I'm sure that he's going to survive.
In the autumn, when we have the mating, then I'm sure he's not going to die.
Right.
Here in Kautokeino, scientists are testing to see if traditional methods of castration are better than modern methods.
He's going to use the traditional method, which they're bringing back now, and he's going to sort of semi-castrate this young male caribou by biting the testicles.
Yes.
Are you getting ready for this? [Indistinct chatter.]
Oh.
He bites and then he Crushes? Crush with his hands.
[Spits.]
Oh! Wow.
- Is that okay? - Yeah.
That's it? You don't bite them off completely.
- You just crush them.
- Yes.
- Okay.
Let her go? - Yeah.
Okay.
One, two, three.
He's never gonna forget this day.
- No.
- When the vet bit off his testicles.
Modern castration tools would have destroyed this deer's testicles completely.
The Sami believe that biting his testicles means that he is still able to supply a little testosterone enough to stay vigorous.
And he won't waste his energy rutting or mating.
Instead, he will focus his attention on eating and growing huge.
This is especially useful now as climate change alters the weather, increasing the thawing and re-freezing events that bury the lichens under a coat of ice.
That layer of ice is like an armor.
These reindeer can't just dig through it-- except, it turns out, these castrated males.
Those males can punch through the ice, open it up, so that other reindeer can then get to the green stuff below.
The Sami call them the Gentlemen Of The Tundra.
You must try to bite.
No, I don't-- I don't think so.
I wouldn't want to hurt one of your reindeer, - in case I bit too hard.
- Oh.
I've never had practice.
I wouldn't know what the hell I'm doing.
My wife used to say, "Learning by doing.
" [Laughter.]
- Learning by doing.
- Yes.
[Laughs.]
This harsh, frozen tundra makes it impractical to raise domestic animals that depend on you for their every need.
Which is why working with wild animals is such a brilliant way to go.
[Laughs.]
And I think it's going to become even more important in the future.
Sanjayan: When I look at those reindeer, and I look at the people who live alongside them, I think that, in an unpredictable world, a world with climate change, a world where storms and weather events are going to get more and more unpredictable, it's that wildness that is going to give us humans a better shot at charting a future.
All over the world, grasslands evolved with big wild herds and dangerous predators.
So where does that leave us in North America? Today, most of America's great plains are no longer wild.
We have transformed the land into a vast breadbasket that feeds our nation.
With so much land under the plow, the wild prairie is now the most endangered ecosystem in North America.
The endless herds of bison are gone, and the remaining pronghorn antelope struggle on their migration.
These few remaining pockets of wild plains are all we have left to teach us how this magnificent place works.
And here, exciting new developments show that it's not only the big animals that keep a grassland healthy.
Walking across this prairie, you could be fooled into thinking that nobody's home, but the truth is the real action happens beneath my feet.
Stretching out under me is a network of literally miles of tiny tunnels.
This is a prairie dog town.
And these are the builders.
Scientists have recently discovered that these rodents are good for the land.
Like saiga and reindeer, grazing by prairie dogs keeps the grass healthy.
Their digging aerates the soil, and fixes nitrogen.
As a result, grass around a prairie dog town is more diverse and contains more protein than elsewhere.
Once there were five billion prairie dogs.
Oh, my God.
Check him out.
But since 1900, farmers have worked hard to exterminate them believing they're bad for agriculture.
Today, only 5% remain.
And their decline has had an equally dramatic effect on the 200 other species that depend in part on the prairie dog for their own survival.
[Squeaking.]
This includes one animal in particular.
The prairie dog's archenemy-- the black-footed ferret.
90% of this predator's diet is prairie dogs.
Which is why our extermination campaign inadvertently sent the black-footed ferret nearer to extinction than just about any other animal on Earth.
In the 1980s, we had only seven breeding pairs left.
Then the state and federal wildlife services launched a groundbreaking breeding program that now releases up to 200 ferrets into the wild every year.
[Growls.]
The wild population is still only around 500.
This mother has two kits, and it's their first time to the surface since being born three months ago.
In a busy prairie dog town, black-footed ferrets aren't popular.
[Squeaking.]
Here in the open, a prairie dog gives as good as it gets.
With mother ferret down the hole, the prairie dog delivers the killer blow.
Bury her alive.
[Squeaking.]
Time to celebrate.
But, like all ferrets, she is a fantastic digger.
And come nightfall, it's her turn to dance.
[Squeaking.]
With the prairie dogs fast asleep, mother ferret can hunt at her leisure.
She just needs to find a burrow where someone's home.
[Hissing.]
[Rattling.]
Preferably not a rattlesnake.
[Shrieking.]
By bringing back key species like prairie dogs and ferrets, we now have a more complete understanding of how healthy grasslands function.
And the big discovery is that grasslands that have both predators and prey may be healthiest of all.
This was proved when we brought back a much bigger predator that had vanished from the lower 48 states.
In 1995, wildlife managers reintroduced wolves into Yellowstone National Park.
[Howling.]
With a top predator killing in the park again, fear returned, and prey species like elk began to act differently.
[Bellowing.]
Grazing animals like elk used to lazily hang around water.
They devoured trees and shrubs like willows, and trampled the stream banks.
But when the wolves started ambushing them near the watering holes, the elk had to change their tactics.
[Shrieking.]
Now they would stay just long enough to drink before moving across the landscape in bunched herds.
Without lingering elk, the riverbanks and willows had time to recover.
And when willows returned, so did other animals, like beavers.
Beavers built ponds, and suddenly there was less erosion.
And amazingly, Yellowstone's elk herds grew even healthier and stronger in part because the wolves had returned.
Just outside the park, many ranchers feared wolves would kill their livestock.
Bryan Ulring wasn't one of them.
Bryan was inspired by the power that a predator has to transform the landscape.
When Bryan first took over the J Bar L ranch, it was barren and the riverbanks were eroded.
But then, like Allan Savory in Africa, he began to keep his cows bunched and constantly on the move.
And the results have been phenomenal.
Perfect.
Should I help you put it on? - Yeah, please.
- Here, hold this.
To be honest, Bryan, I've spent most of my life trying to avoid riding animals that flee at the slightest sign of danger.
Right, well, just try and keep her between you and the ground, and you'll be doing great.
[Laughs.]
That's good advice.
I've always wanted to meet the cowboy who acts like a wolf.
The instant you ride across Bryan's ranch, you notice this place is different.
On a normal ranch, cows are spread out everywhere, lazily munching grass.
But Bryan's cows are nowhere to be seen.
Until finally And there are your cows.
But they're in this one tiny little spot, even though they've got all of this to roam on.
What's the point of having them so tight right now? See how they're walking around? So they're like a bunch of mobile composting units that are recycling the grass into the ground.
Like a giant agricultural machine? Yeah, it's like the-- I think it's like the world's most perfect farming equipment.
The all-in-one farming equipment.
You got the harvester, the seeder, the fertilizer.
And the water.
And the water, all in one unit.
Which way do you want them, Bryan? We want them to go right up on the hill.
Okay.
But first what we've got to do is get a little bit of motion in them.
Right.
Come on, let's go.
As a conservationist, I sort of hate cows.
Oh, look, they're moving.
- Yeah.
Perfect.
- They're moving.
They're in the right spot.
[Mooing.]
But Bryan has managed to get his cows to fill the role once occupied by bison.
And Bryan plays the wolf.
Together they are restoring this land back to health.
And it's a hard truth that I almost don't want to accept because it feels like a betrayal.
But Bryan's somehow figured out a way to make these cows fit within the ecology of the place, and I think there's something really beautiful about that and something really optimistic.
And what has surprised and thrilled me the most is what's happened to wildlife on Bryan's ranch.
Look at that.
[Chirping.]
Birds, which have become endangered elsewhere, are returning here.
Sanjayan: You know, with curlews, they don't like to land in grass that's basically taller than their legs.
The most amazing of these birds is the sage grouse.
Once, they were a common sight on the Western prairie.
Today, they are almost an endangered species.
[Whistling and drumming.]
Not here, though.
For these extraordinary mating displays, sage grouse require areas of short grass, grass that, in this case, has been grazed by Bryan's cows.
Someone told me that 70% of all Montana's bird species are found in this valley.
I've heard something like 260 species of bird.
Yeah.
That has shocked me.
In a million years, I never thought that cows could be so beneficial for the wildlife that I love.
Ulring: Like right here, here's sage grouse poop right there.
Really? - [Thunder.]
- Whoa! As an ecologist, I was taught that people, and especially their livestock, are the enemy of wildlife.
But my journey from Africa to the Arctic to here in Montana is forcing me to rethink everything I know about conservation.
In some ways, it's a painful process.
Halfway through your life, you don't want to realize that much of what you know is probably wrong.
But I now think that if we apply all that we've learnt, we can have thriving ranches that can benefit wildlife.
And amazingly, that same wildlife can benefit us.
I can see this if I go back to where my journey began.
In Africa, the Rift Valley has been one gigantic cattle ranch for 4,000 years.
And all that time, people like the Maasai have lived cheek-by-jowl with some of the biggest predators on Earth.
Herding cows next to lions has obvious risks.
[Bellowing.]
This cow knows she can't turn her back on the lion.
[Growling.]
But the lioness has a cunning plan.
Faking fear, she lures the cow into a trap.
[Bellowing.]
For a Maasai, every cow is a precious investment.
In years past, Maasai warriors here would've track down these lions and killed them.
But ingenious new ideas are creeping into this ancient culture.
The Maasai of Shompole are pioneering new ways to save lions.
And it seems all their wildlife, lions included, are faring better here than even in the national parks.
It's like a miracle, what's happening here.
I'm really such a skeptic by nature that I just don't want to believe it.
But if I do let myself believe it, then here, in this little eden, we have lots of wildlife.
It should be a national park.
It's that much good stuff.
And yet there are people here as well.
Stephen Kamanga drives his cattle right amongst zebra and wildebeest.
Unlike Montana, Stephen doesn't need to pretend to be a predator to get his cattle bunched up.
[Whistling.]
The Maasai have a brilliant strategy for living alongside lions.
Every night after grazing, Stephen brings his entire herd inside a circular fortress made of thorn bushes, called a boma.
Amazing, huh? These bomas can be built in just a few days, which makes them the perfect home for nomadic herders constantly on the search for the best grass.
Do you know some of these guys' names? Oh, yeah.
I know, I know.
Fine, I'm gonna test you.
What's this one? This one is Sotwa.
- Sotwa? - Yeah.
What does that mean? It's like a cow which has been given by a friend.
Stephen can't relax until all the cows are in and the door is shut.
Once the sun disappears, things start to change really quickly here.
The twilight comes, the wind picks up.
It just starts to blow.
There's an excitement in the air.
And I know what's going on out there.
I know now the lions are waking up.
And then, when the pride is assembled, they will spread out into this landscape and they'll be hunting.
The night belongs to the cats.
You know that, don't you? That's why you're in here.
Listen.
They're all listening to me.
They don't like this talk of lions.
Today, the Shompole Maasai have a remarkable new technology to help them live alongside lions.
While Stephen sleeps next to his cows, his brother John sets out in search of the prides.
John's team has fitted key lions in each pride with a radio collar.
GPS and radio telemetry give John a pretty good idea where the lions are.
They're close by, huh? Yeah, they're very close now.
About 150 meters away from us.
That way? That way? That way.
Following John, the film crew and I get an incredible opportunity to get really close to lions.
Sanjayan: The driver has night-vision goggles on, so he can see.
I can't.
But because we now can see in the dark, essentially-- Ow! Although not that well.
We're able to go out here and look for lions.
For filming, we've brought our own revolutionary technology-- a thermal camera.
It sees only heat, so any warm-blooded creature stands out clearly from the colder background.
Now we can study lion behavior in a way that was previously impossible.
- We are basically trying to see the way the lion is.
- There she is.
Oh, I think we might have spotted her.
Is that just one of them, or are there more? There's at least three lions out there.
[Whispering.]
Now, I can't see anything out here.
For a lion, this landscape is wide open.
They have membranes in the back of their eyes that reflect light, even the slightest light-- the light from starlight, the light from the moon.
It allows them to see at night really well.
Better than the things that they're hunting.
[Bellowing.]
That is amazing.
That is amazing.
[Cows mooing.]
You can really appreciate how these grasslands work.
The lions keep the wild herds bunched together and constantly moving.
The grazers never get a chance to overgraze.
As they move, their hooves plow up the soil.
Stephen and John are grateful to lions for controlling the wild herds in this way.
And now, with new technology, they can keep their cows safe.
We found last year where lions were, like, probably 200 meters away from cows, and we were able to save that situation because we were able to quickly call the herders and say, "The lions are there.
Take away the animals.
" So even though the Maasai are a 1,000-plus-year-old culture in this landscape, technology is still giving you a little bit of a new edge.
It's helping us to move faster in understanding our ecosystem better.
Lions help the Maasai of Shompole manage this grassland.
Lions also generate an income from tourists like me who will pay to see them.
The results are amazing.
Ten years ago, there were only ten lions here.
Now there are 64, and more are being born each year.
So long as the Maasai keep doing what they're doing, I think these cubs have a bright future.
But for me, the real revelation isn't about lions.
It's about the role played by the most dominant species on these plains-- us.
I think that what makes this landscape work is, strangely, paradoxically, the fact that there are people in it.
[Music and singing.]
The Maasai of Shompole have held onto traditions that inspire them to love their cows and love the land itself.
But they've had the courage to change some traditions in order to protect wildlife.
[Mooing.]
Now, with their stewardship, these magnificent grasslands can function in the same way they have for thousands of years.
And that gives me hope.
I'm really on a little bit of a desperate search to find whether there are places where people and nature can still coexist.
And when I find a place like where we are right now, I can almost hardly believe it.
But I think after being here for some time, it really is real.
When you walk with the cattle, when you walk with the Maasai here, this is somehow a landscape that has moved beyond conservation.
In other words, this is a place that doesn't need the likes of myself.
And I'm pretty happy about that.
I've been fortunate to meet some of the people pioneering a whole new understanding of the world's great plains.
These are the architects of the new wild.
They are better off because they have learned to form unique partnerships with some of the most incredible animals on Earth.
When you realize that, you realize the potential that humans have to not just destroy places, but also to save them, to keep them productive and functional, and that this notion that we are somehow separate from nature is forever banished from your thoughts, that we both can live in the same space.
That's pretty damn cool.
[Squeaking.]
Next time on Earth A New Wild Forests.
I discover how we can live alongside the most diverse ecosystem on Earth, meeting the people, facing up to the wildlife, I want to find a way to value forests whilst they're still standing.
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