AMERICAN FRONTIERS PROGRAM #1304, "Forever Wild" will
air November 5, 2002.
ALAN ALDA This is prairie. It's a French word
meaning "meadow" --but what a meadow. The early French
explorers who first used the term couldn't have had
any idea what they had stumbled across. The area we
call the Great Plains was once the greatest grassland
on Earth, covering over a quarter of the continental
US, stretching up into Canada and down into Mexico.
But now there's only about one percent of original prairie
left. It succumbed to the tide of railroads, steel plows,
barbed wire, cattle and settlers that began to flood
west 150 years ago. We lost an enormous interlocking
community of plants and animals, but of course we did
get something in return. The Great Plains now yield
roughly 25% of the entire world harvest of wheat, oats,
barley, rye, sorghum and corn. That process, the replacement
of the Earth's wild places by domesticated landscapes,
has been going on for about 10,000 years now, ever since
people invented agriculture. Today that action is concentrated
in the belt of tropical forests that girdle the Earth,
and later in the program I'll be talking with Peter
Raven, one of the world's best known advocates of forest
conservation, about why we should care about losing
ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) We'll also be visiting
Biosphere in Arizona. It's been completely reorganized
as a climate research institute, with sealed-in models
of the earth's key wilderness areas. Now scientists
can begin to see how those areas could react to the
global climate, 50 or 100 years in the future.
ALAN ALDA But first -- the prairie. There's now a significant
movement to restore some of what we've lost. To bring
back to at least parts of the Plains the essential wildness
they once had. Reassembling a working ecosystem is a
little like trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together,
but a few places are beginning to be wild places once
ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) First light, on the prairie.
We're in northeast Oklahoma, to witness a tradition
that stretches back all of 7 years, but with ancient
roots. It's the annual bison roundup on what was once
the Chapman-Barnard cattle ranch. Stampeded into the
corral, by cowboys in pickup trucks, are the first of
over 1,000 bison -- also known as buffalo. 5,000 years
ago the stampede would have been started by Native American
hunters, using a ring of fire set in the prairie grass
- although probably not during a downpour like this.
Today there'll be no feasts of fresh bison meat, but
instead a systematic checkup of each animal to make
sure this precious herd stays in peak condition. In
1989 the ranch became the Nature Conservancy's Tallgrass
Prairie Preserve, the largest prairie restoration project
on the continent.
ALAN ALDA I don't want to get, you
know, unduly nervous, but... they're heading for us.
BOB HAMILTON Yeah.
ALAN ALDA Yeah. Well maybe we should
just step inside the thing here.
BOB HAMILTON They like
ALAN ALDA No, I think we should step inside the
corral. You want to come with me or are you just gonna
stand out there?
BOB HAMILTON Oh no no… they know me.
ALAN ALDA Well, that wasn't so bad.
BOB HAMILTON No,
ALAN ALDA Kinda easy. They are coming back!
BOB HAMILTON They have a very strong, bison have a very
strong herding instinct.
ALAN ALDA Yes, so do I. What
do they do for the land? Why… why are you so concerned
about bison as far as the land is concerned?
In Great Plains grasslands, you're looking at grazing
and fire, are really the two management forces that
we're trying to put back into these landscapes. And
bison were the primary, the premiere historic grazer
in the Great Plains.
ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) But the bison
were too easy a target. In the 1860s special excursion
trains, riding the new railroads, brought random and
widespread slaughter deep into the Plains. Most carcasses,
killed for fun, were left to rot. Then in the 1870s,
bison robes became all the rage, and the collapse of
the great herds began. It's almost incomprehensible,
but by 1900, 60 million animals had been reduced to
a few hundred total, most in zoos and private herds.
Settlers moved in where Plains Indians and the bison
they depended on had co-existed for thousands of years.
Teams of "prairie breakers" as they were known used
oversize plows to expose the rich soil for the homesteaders'
crops of corn and wheat. John Deere's steel plow, invented
in 1835, was tough enough to bust open the tangled prairie
sod - itself a material strong enough to build houses
with. America's great unbroken grassland - our Serengeti
- is gone forever. Parts of the arid short-grass prairie,
closer to the Rockies and now used for grazing, could
be prairie again. But in wheat and corn country - the
Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Illinois - we couldn't
bring the prairie back if we wanted to. The whole system
of native plants and animals has simply disappeared.
Except, that is, on the Chapman Barnard Ranch. It was
never plowed, so every prairie plant is here, somewhere
on its 38,000 acres. It seems strange to immediately
start burning things up, but that's exactly what the
Nature Conservancy did when they moved in. I'm about
to find out why.
HARVEY PAYNE Well, Alan, I hate to
tell you this, but the cowboy custom is, the person
on the right has to get the gate.
ALAN ALDA Okay, I'll
be a good cowboy. One second.
ALAN ALDA (NARRATION)
Extremes of heat, cold, drought and storms are normal
here -- not so comfortable for us modern cowboys, but
they kept the prairie ecosystems happy. In spite of
the weather Harvey Payne, the preserve director, offered
to show me the secrets to prairie restoration.
ALAN ALDA Just call me Slim.
HARVEY PAYNE Okay, how about
ALAN ALDA Tex is good.
ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) One
secret is size. This place is big - 50 square miles
- so there's room for different things to happen in
different places. Our first stop was here, in an area
that was burned in late August, about 2 months ago,
leaving enough time before winter for warm-season grasses
HARVEY PAYNE The bison, once they're released
from the corrals will utilize this area very heavily.
ALAN ALDA Because this is the new growth that they like
HARVEY PAYNE Yes, it is. They will use the
re-growth from a burned area almost exclusively to all
ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) Prairie plants have
specially deep root systems, so they can survive both
drought and fire. When the hot fire passes above, the
roots below are unharmed and even stimulated by the
warming of the soil. The animals will graze here all
winter and into next spring. At that point there'll
be a dramatic change - all the broadleaf plants, which
bison won't eat, will come back very strongly, because
there's no competition from the overgrazed grasses.
Harvey showed me the result on this patch.
This area was burned a year ago last summer and it was
used very heavily by the bison in the first growing
season. The bison have grazed the grasses very closely
to the ground, allowing the broadleaf plants to exhibit
themselves much more dramatically.
ALAN ALDA (NARRATION)
The broadleafs produce flowers and seeds, which in turn
attract insects, birds and small mammals. Then over
a few years the bison will find a new burn area, grasses
will come to dominate again, and the patch will end
up like this - with a thick thatch of grasses, ready
to burn once again. It's this shifting interaction between
burned patches and bison which is the biggest secret
of the prairie. It may look tranquil and settled, but
it's a jungle out there. Things are always changing,
and for every slight alteration there's a plant, an
insect, a bird that's perfectly adapted to the new conditions.
So real prairie, they've discovered here, is not just
grassland. It's hundreds of tiny subsystems, all mixed
HARVEY PAYNE We call this a disturbance-dependent
landscape. And those disturbances are fire and grazing
primarily by bison. But that's what shaped this ecosystem.
And that's what's allowed the 750-plus plant species
here to develop and to flourish. That's what happened
to allow all the different bird species, the insects,
the reptiles, the amphibians, nematodes in the soil.
ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) Already at the Preserve you can
see the richness coming back to prairie life. Prairie
chickens - grouse - like to feed on new growth, but
nest in mature grass. Sandpipers prefer the partial
shelter of young grass. Rare harrier hawks follow the
mice, and the mice are where the best seed crops happen
to be. Multitudes of insects are attracted to many different
flowers. And it seems there's a dozen different flowering
plants for every week of spring and summer, every different
patch of light or shade or passing shower. Once these
constant ripples of change were flowing across millions
of square miles. But now the challenge is to maintain
them over just 50.
HARVEY PAYNE That patchwork dynamics
took place on a large scale in the tall grass prairie
as an ecosystem. We're trying to reduce that scale in
size to this preserve.
ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) Here's
the deliberately complicated burn pattern they're developing
for the first third of the Preserve so far. About 50
different patches get either a Spring, Summer or Fall
burn, about every 5 years. Manipulating the land like
this is truly a return to an earlier age, because the
prairie was largely created by people. For thousands
of years Native Americans set fires to attract bison
to the new growth, probably more fires than were started
by lightning. So over time, every plant and animal became
adapted to fire and bison. Nature's machinery is perfectly
tuned. Seeds caught in the bisons' thick coats, for
example, get spread across the land - especially when
the animals wallow in the dust. Eventually the bison
wallows make seasonal ponds, which attract birds and
snakes, which then… Well, you get the idea. We're back
on the Preserve, at the start of the roundup. 1,300
bison are out here somewhere, but where? Most of them
are exactly where you'd expect -- on the newly burned
patches. It takes a week to drive the herd into progressively
smaller enclosures. And every year a few just can't
be caught - usually the strongest, most experienced
bulls, that can outmaneuver anything. Cows with this
year's calves are the easiest to catch, and that's important,
because the long term goal is to imitate ancient hunting
pressure from wolves and Native Americans. So once they've
built up the herd to the limit of about 3,000 on their
30,000 acres, they'll sell off mainly calves. Eventually
the whole herd, minus a few bulls, is collected in one
50-acre pen. Then for about a week, batch after batch
of animals is run through the corrals. For these cowboys,
it's like working with stronger, faster, more aggressive
cattle - although that doesn't prevent some pretty daring
moves every now and then. This year's calves are separated
out to get their vital brucellosis shot. Brucellosis
is a serious cattle disease, and the Preserve has to
co-exist with its cattle-ranching neighbors. The calves
will rejoin their mothers later. All the rest go down
the chute. Every animal has its computerized record
and its place in the herd structure. So this is a simulated
wild herd. But they're still wild animals nonetheless.
ALAN ALDA These guys are frisky here. Okay, go ahead.
ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) The whole chute has to
be higher, stronger and tougher than what you'd use
for cattle. There are routine shots for parasites and
other cattle diseases - also to be good neighbors.
BOB HAMILTON They've all got microchip transponders in their
ears. These tags…
ALAN ALDA How do you get this guy's job over here?
RANCHER You make him mad.
ALAN ALDA Whoa!
RANCHER I've been a bad boy!
BOB HAMILTON As you can
see, right… right there...
ALAN ALDA Aha, yeah.
BOB HAMILTON ... is the tag. It's just a small plastic tag.
It has a microchip inside of it. So you…
ALAN ALDA Who
gets to put the tag on his ear?
BOB HAMILTON We put
them in typically as yearlings or calves.
Oh, I see -- when they're a little more manageable.
BOB HAMILTON ... easier to handle, yeah.
ALAN ALDA And
what kind of information is in that tag?
Basically kind of like a social security number.
ALAN ALDA How do you decide what happens to the animals after
they leave this point?
BOB HAMILTON Well, it's all determined
beforehand who stays and who goes. By knowing the complete
structure of the herd, then you can sit down in the
comfort of your office and figure out what the carrying
capacity is for next year and the year after. As they
come through then, we can identify those animals and
basically they have been flagged. So, OK this is a 15-year
old cow, you know this is her year to go.
(NARRATION) Before long I was wondering if it was my
year to go.
BOB HAMILTON Just lean in there. Don't get
too close, especially to the adults. They will sucker
you in to where you think...
ALAN ALDA They'll sucker
BOB HAMILTON Yeah, yeah. You think they're at
their full extent…
ALAN ALDA Oh yeah.
BOB HAMILTON ...
and you'll lean in and they'll lunge out and they've
got another 18 inches to go and you'll get a horn in
ALAN ALDA Okay.
BOB HAMILTON You're on.
ALAN ALDA Oh great. Whoa.
BOB HAMILTON Watch out. Watch out
for the equipment there. There you go.
ALAN ALDA Did you get it? Did we get it?
WOMAN Got it.
ALAN ALDA We
got it. Good. Take this. I'll see ya… I'll be at the
ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) One surprise this
year was finally catching up with this terrific 1,600-pound
bull. He was not happy about it. Brought in from Montana
2 year ago, he had never got his microchip tag.
BOB HAMILTON He was a no show last year. He didn't cooperate
in the round up.
ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) Regularly introducing
genetic variety with new animals like this is another
key part of managing the herd. The Tallgrass Prairie
Preserve is a highly successful restoration project,
but for it to stay wild humans will need to look after
it forever. In our next story, we'll see how scientists
are deliberately damaging model wild areas, to simulate
ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) This is the Sonoran
Desert in Arizona. And this is Biosphere 2. It was built
to be an earth capsule - a replica of the world, but
sealed and isolated. Its mission was launched in 1991.
The eight Biospherians embarked on a 2-year experiment
in self-contained living, supported only by the natural
ecosystems inside. It was to be a demonstration to the
world of our dependence on nature and the earth. Biosphere
met that goal - but not in the way that was expected.
Today, tour groups admire the futuristic décor and impressive
systems that remain in place. The experiment in self-contained
living, though, was a failure. The sealed-in atmosphere
became dangerously unbalanced, with oxygen going down,
and CO2 building up. Eventually, outside air had to
be brought in, proving not only that it's hard to live
in a large greenhouse, but also making it clear how
dependent we all are on the availability of the earth
and its systems. When the self-contained experiments
ended the question was, What could be done with this
magnificent, 3-acre, 150 million dollar structure? There
were 7 miniature ecosystems from around the world, hundreds
of plant species, an agricultural area and elaborate
heating, cooling and rain systems. Happily, Biosphere's
Achilles heel during the self-sufficient living experiments
has turned out to be its greatest asset for doing research.
Because it can be sealed off, it's possible to deliberately
change the conditions inside, and measure how the natural
systems respond. In 1996, Columbia University took over
Biosphere and gave it a new mission - to become a center
for research on the earth's climate. The main goal would
be to explore how rising levels of CO2 gas in the earth's
atmosphere might affect natural systems, like forests
or coral reefs. CO2 comes from burning fossil fuels,
like coal or oil. Already it's reached twice the level
it was in pre-industrial times, and it'll double again
by the middle of this century. Scientists generally
agree that rising CO2 is causing global warming. It's
likely there are complicated related effects going on,
too - like storms or droughts or shifting weather patterns.
Much of the research here is trying to get at the basics.
Will extra CO2 in the atmosphere affect forests or oceans
not just through changing weather, but directly - in
how they live and function?
BARRY OSMOND The best view
is from up by the new student village.
ALAN ALDA How
many students do you have there?
BARRY OSMOND Well,
we've had about a hundred and fifty in the first session
ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) The new director
of Biosphere is Barry Osmond, a plant and forest biologist.
I was last here in 1995, before the research goals had
been worked out.
ALAN ALDA Some of these things look
like they've actually either died or are on the verge.
BARRY OSMOND They've wilted. We've lost a lot of leaf
on some species. One of the curious, well, important
things is to discover which species do what in terms
of response to drought. Sound effects are very good.
ALAN ALDA Yeah, very nice. Very mysterious.
Right. I think you've been here before. A number of
ALAN ALDA Yeah, yeah.
BARRY OSMOND This new
ALAN ALDA This walkway wasn't here, was it?
BARRY OSMOND No, this has only been in since January
of this year. And behind you, you see one of the other
major reconstructions. See the plastic curtains?
ALAN ALDA Oh, yeah.
BARRY OSMOND ...that were installed to
seal the rainforest off as a separate chamber.
ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) You can't do research on the model
systems unless they have their own isolated climates.
Plastic curtains also divide the former agricultural
area into three separate, young intensive forests.
BARRY OSMOND It's the concept of enclosure and control that
makes it an experimental system. And it's really the
only place on the planet where you can do these large-scale
experiments. These experiments that we talk about as
driving the new discipline of experimental climate change
ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) Here's a use for the
miniature ocean which the Biospherians would not have
BARRY OSMOND The rain experiment was simply
a matter of putting garden sprinklers from here to there,
every ten feet, turning them upside down, and making
it rain with the right-size raindrops.
ALAN ALDA (NARRATION)
Scientists from half a dozen institutions descended
on Biosphere to create a storm at sea, more realistic
than any Hollywood special effect. They know it was
realistic because they measured everything imaginable
- the surface turbulence, the mixing of fresh and salt
water layers, the size of the drops. The goal was to
see how storms affect the way CO2 in the air gets absorbed
into ocean water. Right now it's believed that about
a third of the globe's man-made CO2 is consumed by ocean
plankton. So we need to know how the whole process works.
This kind of information is essential for building computer
simulations of the global climate of the future. In
this case one 2-hour storm, with 6 inches of rain, yielded
a surprise result.
BARRY OSMOND We discovered that large
raindrops stimulate the mixing of the air and the gasses
in the ocean, a factor of ten times. The first time.
ALAN ALDA Now that's something that you wouldn't have
been able to find in nature, isn't it?
You can't do that experiment in nature. You can imagine
what it's like, trying to find a rainstorm at sea and
then do something like that.
ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) I'm
with Guanghui Lin, Biosphere's resident rainforest expert.
We're on our way to the now-sealed off rainforest. You
have to go through the basement to get there. Down here
you realize it may all be natural up top...
GUANGHUI LIN Just like a factory.
ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) ...but
there's nothing natural about the systems everything
up there depends on.
GUANGHUI LIN …gonna go through
the rainforest airlock.
ALAN ALDA OK.
ALAN ALDA (NARRATION)
Three hundred species were originally planted here 10
GUANGHUI LIN A lot of banana tree around
ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) Two-thirds of the species
that were planted died within a couple of years, but
it's now stable and steadily maturing. So it's not exactly
like a real forest, but Guanghui is confident its basic
processes are the same - and that's what he studies.
GUANGHUI LIN Rainforest very important system on earth.
Right now people believe that a significant amount of
carbon that humans put into the atmosphere was locked
into the rainforest. In this so-called CO2 fertilization
ALAN ALDA So it's locked in there?
GUANGHUI LIN That's correct. At least temporarily, or sequestered
there, locked there.
ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) So right
now rainforests are essentially growing faster because
of the increased CO2 in the air. In the process they
absorb about a third of the CO2 humans are generating
-- about the same as the ocean. The big question is,
how long can rainforests keep it up? This is the standard
way to measure how active a leaf is - how much CO2 it's
taking in by photosynthesizing. You can do this anywhere
- in an Amazon forest or in a lab. But because this
forest is totally enclosed, they can go much further.
They can track what happens to all the CO2 in the system.
CO2 is absorbed by growing leaves, but it's given off
by decomposing leaves. It's also given off by billions
of microorganisms active in the soil, or by plant roots.
When he tracked everything in this way, Guanghui made
a disturbing discovery. If he runs the rainforest chamber
with a mid-21st century atmosphere -- about double today's
CO2 -- just as much CO2 comes out of the forest, from
the roots and soil and leaf litter, as goes into the
leaves in the canopy. The forest reaches its limit.
GUANGHUI LIN At the highest CO2, the rainforest as a
whole system reaches so-called CO2 saturation. At that
point, CO2 coming into the forest will come out almost
in the same amount.
ALAN ALDA You mean like if you pour
enough milk in a milk bottle, it overflows. Or a bucket.
GUANGHUI LIN Exactly.
ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) If Guanghui
is right, that means in about 50 years rainforests will
be losing their capacity to lock in CO2. And that's
without taking into account the steady loss of rainforests
that's going on now.
ALAN ALDA Is this overstating it?
We could once handle the rate of, the rate at which
we put carbon in the atmosphere. But now we're reaching
the limit of it to hold it as a sink. And the whole
system is reaching a limit so that the more we put in
now, the more the effects of that carbon in the atmosphere
GUANGHUI LIN Exactly. Exactly. That's,
you... I think that statement is correct.
(NARRATION) In the last couple of years, Guanghui has
also put his rainforest through a series of droughts.
One prediction for global warming is that there will
be more frequent droughts in the Amazon. After a drought
here, the forest is revived with rain before the plants
are permanently damaged. It's known that during a drought,
leaves shut down - they stop photosynthesizing. So if
the soil and roots just keep on giving off CO2, a drought-stricken
forest could turn into a CO2 source, rather than a sink.
But here they've found the soil and roots shut down
too, so at least the atmosphere won't be gaining CO2
during forest droughts. Like the ocean rain experiment,
the drought and high-CO2 work would have been very hard
to do out in the real world. And keeping track of all
the CO2 is impossible - you can only do that in a completely
enclosed system. It's been just 6 years since the Biosphere
rainforest was turned into a climate research tool,
and already it's yielding significant results. In future,
we'll be hearing more from this little patch of forest.
One thing about Biosphere is you can usually count on
ALAN ALDA Thank you. I'll see you later.
ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) I don't think there are any violent
ocean storms scheduled for today, so I'm heading out
to check on the coral reef, with Les Kaufman, a marine
biologist. The three-quarters of a million-gallon ocean
tank is not in such good shape as the rainforest. All
this furry stuff is algae. There are a couple of fast-growing
species which have come to dominate. The corals have
to compete with the algae for light, so species that
grow slowly - like this one - have a hard time. The
white parts are dead. Life and death struggles are normal
on reefs, and corals usually bounce back rapidly after
fish or algae attacks. But here the balance has tipped
towards algae. Natural reefs have more light than Biosphere's,
and more fish. The fish eat the algae, allowing the
corals to grow vigorously. A healthy reef can even recover
from so-called bleaching events, when unusually warm
water kills off the corals. Bleachings are likely to
happen more often with global warming. The darker patches
here are corals growing back. Designed to simulate a
typical Caribbean lagoon and reef, Biosphere's ocean
tank was started off with a natural diversity of corals
and fishes. There were 31 coral types, 47 fish species
and hundreds of individual fish. But fish began to die,
it was too dark for some corals, and the water was too
rich in nutrients - partly because at first the tank
was connected to the mangrove swamp. In nature a reef
and a swamp wouldn't be so close. The result was a plague
of algae. Like the rainforest, the tank is now stable
and self-contained. The fish are feeding on the algae,
and the remaining corals are surviving. But Les Kaufman
says it's like a damaged Caribbean lagoon, which has
some pollution and is overfished. Even so the tank has
turned out to be a terrific research tool. Like in the
rainforest, the first thing they did was a long-term
experiment on the effects of high CO2 in the atmosphere.
It's easy to simulate that here by slightly changing
the water chemistry - something you can't do in the
open ocean, of course. The result was spectacular and
alarming. At CO2 levels we'll reach 50 years from now,
corals reduced their growth rates by 40 percent. The
CO2 disrupts the way corals make their calcium carbonate
skeletons. They're now building on that first big result.
Because the tank contains a working reef community,
Les Kaufman is looking at how high CO2 affects the constant
struggles between competing species.
ALAN ALDA Are these
the cages here?
LES KAUFMAN These are they right here.
So there are four of these arrays, and at every one
there's a cinderblock with exposed corals, and a cinderblock
with caged corals.
ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) Arrays of different
baby corals are laid out in the shallow water, where
light levels are close to normal. Some samples are in
the open, others in cages. The cages keep fish - which
would normally graze on the algae - out. There are still
enough algae-eating fish in the tank to pick the exposed
coral samples pretty clean. They're finding that high
CO2 tips the balance further toward the algae. If there
are no fish around, the weakened corals tend to lose
the battle, and become smothered with algae. Les Kaufman
believes this offers a glimpse of what's happening outside
LES KAUFMAN All these things are going on
at the same time out in the real ocean. The CO2 level's
going up, coral growth is slowing down. We're over-fishing.
We're taking away the fish.
ALAN ALDA The fish eat the
LES KAUFMAN ...eat the algae.
ALAN ALDA So
it sounds like, if what you think may be happening is
happening, that it's gonna accelerate the rate of damage
to the coral.
LES KAUFMAN Dead on. That's exactly right.
And I think that's part of the reason why even in areas
where bleaching is not a severe problem right now, corals
are going under very quickly.
ALAN ALDA (NARRATION)
I challenged Les Kaufman to explain why people who never
see coral reefs should care about the threat to them.
ALAN ALDA So we lose the coral. What difference will
LES KAUFMAN Well, of course I'm partial to
coral. And anybody who lives between 25 degrees north
or south latitude is partial to coral, because it protects
shorelines and provides food, and tourism -- huge tourism
industry. But forget about the corals as anything but
a harbinger of what we're going to be feeling in the
entire world ocean. I mean, one of the things people
don't realize is that, even though a lot of talk now
is about threats to coral reefs, all the marine organisms
in the whole world ocean that build their skeletons
out of limestone, out of calcium carbonate -- that's
clams and lobsters and shrimp and on and on and on --
all of those organisms are going to suffer from this
ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) At Biosphere they're beginning
to look at ways to respond to increasing CO2 in the
BARRY OSMOND We've kept one of the original
living quarters as a museum. And this is the one here.
ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) A big part of the original Biospherians'
mission was to grow their own food. Although they were
often hungry, they did manage to support themselves
on a half-acre of intensively cultivated high-quality
soil. Today the agricultural area has been separated
into three sealed greenhouses, with CO2 at the level
of today's atmosphere in one, and double and triple
in the others -- where we'll be in about 50 and 100
ALAN ALDA What makes you say that the CO2
concentration will be like that at the end of the next
century? That seems an awful long way off to predict.
BARRY OSMOND There's no doubt. You know, I'm as sure
about these numbers -- within a large error -- but I'm
as sure about the increase as anything I know. It is
clearly, that's the way it is. There is no doubt about
ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) The three greenhouses
now contain young poplar trees. They're grown around
the world in intensive forestry operations, as pulp
wood for newsprint. They grow 3 feet a month in season,
then here they're cut back to start again the following
year. The theory is that poplars could be grown specifically
to absorb CO2. Then instead of going for pulp, they'd
be used for furniture, or even stored in the Arctic,
so the CO2 would stay locked up in the wood - or sequestered,
as biologists say.
ALAN ALDA That sounds like what we
ought to do is plant poplar trees all over the place
and help reduce the effect of this warming that we're
BARRY OSMOND This is a small component of
what has to be done. It's the best that biology could
do. That is, to take a fast-growing tree that produces
a fixed form of carbon, which is not going to metabolize
very quickly and get some degree of sequestration, effect
some degree of sequestration. This is not going to answer
the problem of rising CO2 altogether, but it's a useful
ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) The Biosphere
intensive forest is now in its third research year,
but already there have been surprises. In year one,
the high-CO2 trees grew faster than the ones with low
CO2, but in year two they didn't. And because this is
a closed system, they know the CO2 was still absorbed.
Unless there was some kind of mistake, the CO2 must
have gone below ground - into the roots or soil. That
could spell trouble for the idea of forest sequestration.
ALAN ALDA We're figuring out ways to store the badness,
but we're building up a bank account apparently, of
that badness and it's like a time bomb. Because unless
we figure out a way to do something with it, we've got
all this stuff laying in the ground that can open up.
RAMESH MURTHY We don't know. We don't know.
Yeah, you don't know what the mechanics of that are.
RAMESH MURTHY Right. We don't know if it's going to
be a bank account. We don't know if it's going to be
a time bomb ticking down there to come out. So that's...
we need to know. If we have to go forward and use forests
as a, sequestration, as a policy, you need to know what
happens both above and below ground.
ALAN ALDA (NARRATION)
In the coming years at Biosphere, they'll be pursuing
that question, and many others related to the global
climate. How important are those questions?
There are a lot of people who say, we don't have to
do anything about this now because scientists are really
in disagreement about how really serious the question
is, CO2 and the atmosphere. Are they?
LES KAUFMAN Well,
there are still a few people who carry a healthy skepticism
about the exact nature of what's happening and how it's
happening. And we need to be skeptical about details.
But if you're asking me, is elevated CO2 in the atmosphere
a problem? That we need to do something about now? The
evidence in my book is overwhelming.
ALAN ALDA (NARRATION)
So maybe Biosphere, once an answer looking for a question,
has now found its role.
BARRY OSMOND I think, on the
basis of our observations, our experiments, the case
will be easily made for manipulative experiments in
climate change science. And that's the future.
ALDA (NARRATION) The Missouri Botanical Garden in St.
Louis. I'm visiting its director, Peter Raven. We're
heading for the Garden's signature half-acre geodesic
dome, now a 40-year-old classic.
ALDA Now is this a rainforest?
RAVEN It is up here. It's warmer and then it's cooler
down there. So over here we can grow plants that are
really from tropical rain forests, and as you go down
towards the west here you get into plants that are from
cooler and cooler places, like the islands in the Pacific
or from cloud forests. Basically we try to build as
much variety in here as we can, so people can get a
good idea of what it's like in the tropics.
ALDA Is this place mostly for people to become educated
about rainforests in general, or do you actually do
research on these plants here?
RAVEN It's mainly to educate people about what the plants
are like in the rainforests and other kinds of tropical
forests around the world.
ALDA So these plants are, in a way, in an environment
that they wouldn't find themselves in the natural world.
RAVEN Well, the temperature and the humidity and all
are about the same. I mean, one of the funny things
is it's really cooler in the tropics than it is in St.
Louis in the summer.
ALDA So you have to air-condition it.
RAVEN We need to actually cool the place…
ALDA …to keep it tropical. What's happening?
RAVEN Vents are opening or something because the temperature
is hitting some kind of a critical level. It'll be over
in a minute. It's something like opening vents.
ALDA You just have to think about temperature or mention
it and the windows open.
RAVEN No actually, that's what I wish.
ALDA (NARRATION) In Raven's 30 years as director, the
Garden's sparkling public displays have gone from strength
to strength. They're comparable to the New York Botanical
Garden, or Kew Gardens in London. But Raven's done something
else here, that the public doesn't see. This is now
one of the leading plant research centers in the world,
and the headquarters of attempts to save US endangered
plants. Raven has been a passionate conservationist
since the 60s when, on academic field trips, he saw
the reality of mass extinction developing in the tropics.
Mixed in with the plants being raised for display are
some of the rarest plants in America, saved in the nick
of time from extinction.
RAVEN This is a medlar. It's a plant that was discovered
about twelve years ago. A little tiny grove of these,
with just 26 individuals was discovered in Central Arkansas.
The whole genus, the whole kind of plant was unknown
in North America before.
ALDA Is there something special you can learn when you
have a plant like this that seems to be unique. I mean
that's so different from it's neighbors?
RAVEN All that we know is that since it's very unique,
since its so unusual, it may have characteristics that
ALDA (NARRATION) Here's a unique lobelia from Hawaii,
with fewer than 200 in the wild. Here's a rare member
of the pea family, from Tennessee, and here's a groundnut
with 25 little patches left in the Midwest. So why should
we care about a rare medlar from Arkansas?
RAVEN This is a plant in the rose family which has lots
of plants of economic importance: apples, plums, peaches,
strawberries and so forth. So it could be that the genetics
of this particular plant would be of interest in relation
to economic uses of the rose family directly. But we
just don't know. We're barely getting the tools to even
be able to think about those questions.
ALDA In a way, letting this go would be like burning
down a library that had only one copy of each book.
RAVEN Letting any species go is like that.
ALDA (NARRATION) One of Raven's favorite projects here
is a 15-acre Japanese garden. It's vital, he says, for
Americans to learn about others, and to understand what's
going on out there. It's a crisis, and the prognosis
RAVEN We'll lose about half of all tropical species
during the course of the next century, which amount
to about a third of all the species on Earth.
ALDA (NARRATION) The images are by now familiar. Tropical
forests are rapidly disappearing, at the rate of about
150 square miles a day - 1% a year. Forest is fatally
attractive. The timber's worth money, and the space
gives room to expand. Developing countries need both,
as they follow the way we in the industrialized countries
ALDA Why is it important not to let species go extinct?
What difference does it make? Does it make a difference
to us as humans? Does it make, I mean, will we perish
if a certain critical number of species become extinct?
RAVEN It's not that we're not gonna survive. We're gonna
survive. We're gonna survive in whatever kind of a world
we build for ourselves. The question is, shouldn't we
be capable of making intelligent choices not of survival
but of what kind of a world do we want?
ALDA (NARRATION) In Raven's world, people acknowledge
that we are part of nature, that we evolved in wild
places side by side with nature's diversity, and that
we have no right to destroy these wonderful things.
Who could disagree with such an idea, he asks, when
faced with the beauty of the forest? Raven helped coin
the term biodiversity to describe the huge range of
species that fit together to make ecosystems - like
tropical forest or the American prairie. The problem
is the forces arrayed against advocates like Raven are
immensely powerful, and some would say unstoppable.
Just look at our own short history.
NARRATOR To make a million acres bloom anew. To build
an industrial empire from the wasted power of the Columbia.
GUTHRIE (SONG) Now river you can ramble where the sun
sets in the sea. But while you're rambling river, you
can do some work for me. Roll Columbia, won't you roll,
roll, roll. Roll Columbia, won't you roll, roll, roll.
ALDA (NARRATION) It took us only about 300 years to
dam every major river from the Atlantic to the Pacific,
cut down all but 2% of the original forest, and plow
under a million square miles of prairie. We literally
took nature apart, without really understanding it.
In the process we found prosperity, and pollution. But
now the tinkering is becoming global in scale. Scientists
agree we're changing the climate -- and what else could
we be doing?
RAVEN I think we have to think of the dictum of the
great American conservationist Aldo Leopold who said
"the first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save
all the cogs and wheels."
ALDA So you don't leave 'em out when you put them back
RAVEN When we're learning…when we're learning what we
can do, that's just the time that we ought to be concerned
about saving the parts that we can do it with.
ALDA Is the developing world going to catch up with
us and surpass us, do you think, in the ability to wreck
things? How is that gonna work?
RAVEN Well, 20% of the people in the world live in developed
or industrialized countries. We have about 85% of the
world's economy, use about 80% of the industrial energy,
have about 90% of the world's scientists and engineers.
So, that's about proportional to our impact on the world's
ecosystems, about proportional to the amount of pollution
that we produce and amount of waste that we produce
and the destruction of natural environments. It is our
pressure on the world that is really causing most of
the damage, directly or indirectly.
ALDA And yet we're always worried and always preaching
to the developing world that as they develop, they better
not develop the way we did.
RAVEN If everybody in the world lived as we do in the
United States, it's estimated it would take about two
more of additions of planet Earth to accommodate everybody
and we haven't got it.
ALDA (NARRATION) People have to understand, says Raven,
that we humans are inseparable from the natural world.
We use it all the time.
RAVEN When New York City wanted to purify its water
about ten years ago, it found that it had two choices:
it either could put about five billion dollars in new
water purification plants or it could put about one
and a half billion dollars in restoring the watersheds
in the Catskills. It was an easy choice.
ALDA (NARRATION) More often those choices are not so
easy, or so obvious. For example, we filled in or drained
about half our wetlands before we fully understood how
they purify water, recycle nutrients, absorb floods,
and provide nursery grounds for marine life. There may
be as many as 20 million insect species in the world.
Most are in tropical forests, but many are right here
at home, working hard to pollinate our crops. We don't
know the effects of destroying a large part of the globe's
insects. And we don't know how effectively polluted
oceans will continue to help regulate the global atmosphere
- which is just one of the things oceans do, as do forests.
Biologists are now calling these natural processes,
RAVEN They've been estimated by some economists as worth
$37 trillion or some arbitrary number like that. But
actually, it's pretty easy to see that they're priceless.
If we didn't have them, we'd all be dead so we wouldn't
be worrying about what they were worth.
ALDA It seems to me that that points to the incredible
complexity of nature, and of this system that we're
all hooked into. When you talk about our interconnectedness,
that sounds like it makes it especially difficult to
know what piece you can pull out without the whole thing
RAVEN That's right. It's not only incredibly complex,
but it is our basic habitat. It's the resource or it's
the area into which we evolved. You see, 400 generations
ago, just 400 generations, 10,000 years ago, there were
only a few million people in the whole world. It's really
only been the invention of crop agriculture that's allowed
the global population to build up to where we're cultivating
an area the size of South America, producing food, producing
poets, musicians, specialists of all kinds that create
what we call civilization. But it all relates ultimately
on the ability of natural systems to be able to support
ALDA (NARRATION) The nightmare that Raven foresees is
growing poverty and population driving a quickening
pace of ecosystem destruction in developing countries.
The only possible answer, he believes, lies with new
ideas - especially new science - coming from within
developing countries themselves.
RAVEN One out of every four people in the world get
by on a dollar a day. And the women and children in
those societies have no opportunity whatever to contribute
to human progress, because they spend their whole time
carrying fuelwood and water over great distances back
to smoky, carcinogenic huts. That's a way of insuring
that the human race will not make the progress that
it can. What I would like to do is to be able to build
up the 10% of the world's scientists and engineers that
exist in developing countries, into responsible groups
in those countries that would be able to advise their
governments and their people how to achieve the aims
that they want: sustainability, health, relative prosperity,
dignified lives in which people can contribute. So a
lot of our energy here in the Garden, and a lot of my
personal energy, is devoted to building institutions,
and to empower people in developing countries to be
able to take care of their own futures adequately.
ALDA (NARRATION) And what about us in the rich countries?
He says it's the same answer. We need to consume fewer
of the world's resources, but we can live just as well
if we get smart and use science. That's the first thing.
The second may be a little harder.
RAVEN If there would be a single thing that we could
do in the United States that would support global sustainability
in the future, and the most possible options for our
grandchildren and their grandchildren, it would be to
bring our fellow citizens and ourselves to our senses
about the fact that we live on a single planet Earth,
with magnificent diversity run by people in something
like 200 different nations, and that we all are managing
this beautiful planet together. Promote a spirit of
internationalism in the United States. Help people understand
why it is that we depend on countries all over the earth,
and do something about it -- in our schools, in all
of our social groups, and in any way that we can.
ALDA (NARRATION) If that doesn't work out, our idea
of wilderness may have to change. It'll be confined
to places like this, or Biosphere or the Tallgrass Prairie
Preserve -- and to stay wild it'll have to be managed
by humans forever.