[♪]
[David Suzuki]: Canada has some
of the most remarkable wilderness
found anywhere in the world...
And some of the planet's most iconic wildlife.
It has the longest coastline of any country in the world.
It has more surface freshwater
than any other nation on Earth...
And the largest intact forest left on the planet.
And yet much of this great wilderness
and the wildlife found here today
is a result of shaping by humans
over thousands of years.
[Flames crackling]
Canada is a land filled
with astounding wilderness and wildlife.
And this Series will explore
this incredible natural diversity
and the forces that produced it.
15,000 years ago, Canada was buried
under a kilometres-thick, continent-wide glacier.
This is when the story
of Canada's modern wildlife and landscapes
actually begins.
As sea levels lowered,
a land bridge with Asia was created,
along which new life entered North America.
And for the first time,
humans arrived in this new world.
Right from the start,
they began to change the land and wildlife around them...
And nothing would ever be the same again.
But 15,000 years later,
Canada is considered one of the wildest countries
in the world.
And one of its greatest natural spectacles
takes place each year on its Atlantic Coast.
This is the province of Newfoundland,
and it's as far east as you can go
on the North American continent.
For thousands of years,
this place has drawn travellers to its shores.
Humpback whales arrive here each spring
from as far away as the Caribbean.
They're drawn by the abundance of this place.
It's a richness that comes from the sea.
[♪]
Over the years,
this richness drew many different types of visitors.
In 1497, John Cabot arrived
and became the first European since the Vikings
to lay claim to this new-found land.
Cabot was looking for a new trade route to China,
but instead stumbled upon
the unimaginably rich natural resources of Canada.
Here on the East Coast,
that wealth begins under the sea.
Capelin.
Huge shoals of these small fish, numbering in the billions,
mass along the coast of Newfoundland
each spring.
These nutrient-rich fish
support the incredible abundance of life here.
The Atlantic cod were once here in numbers so great
that boats occasionally had a hard time
getting through their shoals.
Such rich fishing grounds
lured the first Europeans to these shores.
Today, the great schools of cod are mostly gone.
But that doesn't mean the capelin here are safe.
[Humpback whale call]
These productive seas attract
the largest gathering of Humpback whales in the world.
These massive predators
have travelled thousands of kilometres
to be here at this time of year to feast on capelin.
They haven't fed for months, and they're hungry.
They can eat up to a ton of capelin
in a single day.
In one massive gulp,
these whales can take in 50,000 litres of water...
And capelin.
The capelin aren't just hanging around the coast
to feed the whales.
They are here for a reason...
to breed.
These capelin are beach spawners,
so to reproduce, they have to get to shore.
And there is only one way to get there...
They have to surf.
Most of the time,
it's truly hard to appreciate the abundance of the sea,
as it's often out of sight, hidden beneath the surface.
But when the capelin spawn in Newfoundland,
the incredible productivity of this place
literally washes up onto shore...
And this puts them in easy reach
of a whole new set of predators.
[Gulls squawk]
[♪]
Somehow in this crazy tumult
of water, sand, and tumbling bodies,
each capelin has to find a partner.
Then, in the dozen seconds that it takes
for the wave to slide back over the sand
into the sea,
they have the perfect conditions for mating.
The female lays her eggs
while competing males flank her,
jostling for position to fertilize them.
[♪]
The capelin have made it
past the cod, the whales, and the gulls
to produce the next generation.
This incredible spectacle here on Canada's East Coast
is a testament to another time,
one that drew the first Europeans
to these shores.
And to these early visitors, like Cabot,
this was a new frontier, waiting to be exploited.
It didn't take them long to realize
that there were already people here.
John Cabot was one of the first
to encounter a people called the Beothuk,
the native inhabitants of Newfoundland and Labrador.
To celebrate their tribal identity,
they completely covered
their bodies, clothing, and weapons
with red ochre.
This led to the name "Red Indians" being applied
to many of the native peoples of the continent.
This was a meeting of two very different worlds.
But the Beothuk didn't want to have anything to do
with these new arrivals.
Cabot and the other early explorers
quickly came to realize
that this new world was already home to many people.
But what they could never have imagined
was that the seemingly pristine, wild landscapes they found here
had been shaped by the First Nations inhabitants
over thousands of years.
[Birds twittering]
[♪]
At the time of Cabot's arrival,
the Iroquoian and Algonquian people of the eastern forests
had created a rich, lush homeland.
In 1679, one European visitor
described these eastern oak forests
as full of "vast meadows, vineyards,
"trees bearing good fruit,
"groves and forests...
"so well disposed
one would think nature alone could not have made it."
And that turned out to be very true indeed.
It was a fertile patchwork of oak forests and grasslands,
a savannah-like habitat where wildlife thrived.
When Cabot arrived,
this continent supported huge populations of wild deer,
millions more than it does today.
Over thousands of years,
the people here had engineered their very own garden of eden
through the careful use of fire.
But we are only just beginning to realize the massive extent
to which they had shaped the country around them.
The first human inhabitants of North America
weren't shaping the landscape with fire
on just a small and local scale.
They were burning tens of millions of hectares
each year.
[Fire crackles]
Fire would burn away the young trees,
creating large grassy openings in the forest...
And clearing the way for the larger trees,
protected by their thick bark,
to grow even bigger and produce more nuts and fruit.
With controlled burns,
these people created
one of the most productive landscapes
on the continent.
But it didn't last.
Although today,
modern forest managers are rediscovering
the positive effects of fire,
centuries ago,
the practice of burning these forests ended...
And the rich, open savannah habitat
of the oak forests
was lost.
Now, after 300 years,
fire is once again shaping
the remaining black oak forests of Eastern Canada.
But only a few tiny patches remain...
Protected in places like High Park in Toronto,
that was built over the top of this once extensive habitat.
Without the practice of burning,
the remaining hardwood forests of Canada
look very different
from those that stood in Cabot's time.
While not as rich and varied, they are much more colourful
because of the abundance of maple trees
in the forest today.
Maple are very sensitive to fire,
so they were kept back by the burning of the forest.
But when the burning stopped,
maple trees started to take over.
One of Canada's most famous natural displays
is a relatively recent creation
arising from our new relationship
with forests.
In winter, the maple's broad leaves
are too flat and thin to protect from freezing.
So each fall, the tree cuts its losses
by pulling its resources back into its trunk,
letting the leaves die.
And that leads
to one of the natural world's most stunning displays of death.
North of the maples,
the Boreal forest stretches unbroken
across the country
nearly 10,000 kilometres long from east to west.
It's considered the largest intact forest left
in the world.
For six months every year, snow transforms the forest.
Winter is a difficult season for many wild animals,
but some are better equipped for it
than others.
Wolverines are one of the most elusive animals
in the world.
With large furry feet,
it almost floats across the deep snow.
They are rarely seen,
and few have ever been captured on camera.
Winter in the northern forest can be challenging to life here.
But the forest provides a refuge
for many different animals during the winter,
even for one of the planet's
most famous cold-adapted creatures.
And she's here for a very good reason.
Over the winter, she gave birth
in this den beneath the trees.
After five months inside,
it must feel good to be out.
Nowhere else in the world
can you see Polar bears playing among trees.
These new cubs
still have a lot to learn from their mother
and will spend the next two years with her
before striking out on their own.
As spring approaches,
these bears leave the shelter of the trees
to follow the retreating ice north.
But there are many forest creatures
that never leave,
and some that only come out at night.
[Animal call echoes]
Squirrels are the quintessential forest creature,
and these ones are special
because not only are they nocturnal...
They can fly!
While they don't fly in the true sense of the word,
Flying squirrels can glide for 50 metres between trees.
Their tails act like rudders, steering them around obstacles.
Flying squirrels feed on the seeds in cones
that grow on the trees in which they live,
and they inhabit all types of forests
right across Canada.
Flying squirrels stay active all year
and don't hibernate.
But there are other creatures
living in these northern Canadian forests
that have to.
Right on the southern edge of the great forest
in central Manitoba,
each spring, there is a magical reawakening
from beneath the forest floor.
[♪]
Red-sided garter snakes are just waking up
from their eight-month-long winter sleep.
They journeyed here last fall from up to 80 kilometres away
to hibernate
in these deep limestone sinkholes.
The males emerge first in their thousands.
It not just the spring sun that has brought them out.
There's something else these males are waiting for.
All these male Red-sided garter snakes
have been waiting for the females
to emerge from their hibernation.
Then, slowly, in ones and twos, the females begin to appear.
Females emit a pheromone
that drives the males, who are much smaller,
into a frenzy.
Dozens of males cling to her, trying to mate.
Afterwards, the female dislodges her partner
by doing a body roll.
He tries to hang on
to keep his competitors from mating with her as well.
In many ways, it's surprising
to see cold-blooded creatures like snakes
creating such a spectacular display
in the northern climes of Canada.
But they're drawn together here,
as it's the only shelter deep enough
for them to survive the cold Canadian winter.
This concentration
makes it the largest gathering of snakes
in the world.
Further south and west from here,
at the centre of the country,
the forest gives way to a very different landscape...
The Prairies.
At one time, this vast grassland
stretched all the way south to Mexico.
Its broad, flat expanse was created
by the sediments deposited
when the continental glaciers melted.
[♪]
These vast open plains are perfect habitat
for one particular animal
that seems purpose-built for them.
Pronghorn antelope
are the fastest hoofed mammals on the planet.
But today, they're ecological ghosts...
Relics of a time
when this open grassland
was home to cheetahs and other predators
fast enough to catch them.
The cheetahs are long gone,
along with a lot of the wildlife
that used to live on this continent
millennia ago.
Today, the Pronghorn sprint on alone,
running a race that ended 10,000 years ago.
Pronghorns have always lived in the centre of the country
because further west,
the landscape is radically different.
[♪]
To the west,
the Prairies run into a crumpled landscape
that gives rise to the Rocky Mountains,
an unbroken chain almost 5,000 kilometres long
of some of the tallest peaks on the continent.
Canada's western edge
is one impressive mountain range after another.
In Northern British Columbia,
the Stikine river
cuts a great, dark chasm through the mountains
on its way to the Pacific.
More people have walked on the moon
than have paddled through this canyon.
These vertical walls are the home of mountain goats.
Sure-footed relatives of antelope,
they seem at ease
making their way across these sheer cliff faces
where one slip could mean a long fall to death.
The vertical walls of the Stikine canyon
provide some truly spectacular mountain goat habitat.
Water flowing from these mountains
carry great loads of minerals and silt
westwards to the Pacific.
Here in British Columbia,
where the mountains meet the sea,
there's a combination of elements
that create the most productive landscape
in the country.
Land and sea...
Life here thrives
from the alignment of these two elements.
It's the forests
where the link between the sea and the land
tells the most.
Canada's West Coast
is home to a third
of the world's remaining temperate rainforest.
It is one of the richest habitats
on the planet.
Among these trees,
there is a greater abundance of life
than anywhere else in Canada.
It's a rich and magical place
filled with strange and wonderful creatures...
Like the Spirit bear,
a rare colour phase of the North American Black bear.
He's not an albino.
He's a Black bear,
but born with a combination of rare genes
that makes his fur white.
But where does a bear in these woods go
to find something to eat?
Each summer,
the network of rivers on Canada's West Coast
brings food to the Spirit bear's doorstep.
But just like any bear, he has to catch it.
Fishing is a skill,
and some bears are naturally better at it
than others.
This particular bear
doesn't seem to be very good at it.
They seem so close.
Maybe a new technique will do the trick.
But a surprise attack from above doesn't work either.
Finally, he gets one.
He's going to need a lot of these
over the next few months
to prepare for winter.
For centuries, this rich temperate rainforest
has supported many generations of Spirit bears.
But further north in Canada's vast tundra region,
the wildlife has to survive
in a landscape that's far less productive.
Geographically, the centre of the country
is actually in the middle of the Arctic tundra.
It seems
people have had very little impact
on this place.
And for a long time,
it was thought to be the one landscape
that had not changed since the ice age.
Caribou that live here
have to migrate over vast distances
to find enough food to eat.
The plants of the tundra are very poor in nutrients.
It's hard for the animals to extract much
from the mosses and lichens that grow on the tundra today.
Caribou are one of the few grazers
that can survive on this meagre food.
But the tundra wasn't always like this.
Recent scientific research shows
that 15,000 years ago,
the tundra environment was, in fact, a grassland.
And it was grazed by very different creatures
than we see in the Prairies today...
Mammoths.
It was a surprisingly productive habitat
this far north.
That is, until a new arrival.
As the ice age ended,
people arrived on this grassland,
known as the mammoth steppe,
that supported vast herds of grazers.
But these people were skilled hunters,
new to the animals that lived here,
which had no defence against them.
Within a few centuries,
most of these animals were extinct.
Scientists now believe that with the mammoths gone,
the grasses died out,
causing the ground to turn wet and boggy.
The fertile grassland disappeared...
And the land became the tundra that we see today,
making it the biggest human-changed landscape
in the country.
15,000 years ago,
the tundra was Canada's first frontier.
Today, Canada's has a new frontier...
The Arctic.
And as with earlier frontiers,
humans continue to alter the world around them.
Right now, the Arctic landscape
is undergoing one of the biggest human-caused changes
in the history of the planet.
Change in the global climate is melting the Arctic,
opening up a new frontier...
Creating conditions that have probably not been seen here in a million year
but it's a fundamentally different frontier
than the past.
The changes here
are being caused by humans all over the world,
and created unintentionally in a very short span of time.
No one knows how, or even if,
the life of this region will adapt
to these new conditions.
And the changes we bring to the Arctic
will be felt
far beyond the boundaries of this place.
They will influence the entire planet.
The story of Canada's eternal frontier continues.
Subtitles enhancements by: HandyMan