Idaho's Impossible Rainforest

0:00 (thunder rumbling)- I am in Idaho.

0:03 (upbeat music) Every summer, these forests burn,

0:06 and every winter, they get buried in snow.

0:08 Rain comes from the ocean, but that's hundreds of miles away.

0:11 And on top of all that, it doesn't rain that much out here.

0:15 Everything I've learned about rainforests tells me that this shouldn't be one.

0:20 But I look around, and this is a rainforest if I've ever seen one.

0:27 It's the start of the 1800s,

0:28 and Europeans are making their first explorations of northwestern North America.

0:33 They're looking for new places to trap furs, and for the Northwest Passage,

0:38 a fabled water route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific.

0:41 The North West Company has sent out David Thompson to map the region,

0:45 make contact with indigenous groups, and establish fur trading posts.

0:49 He's the first European to explore these mountains.

0:52 He ascends the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains,

0:55 begins the descent down the western slope,

0:58 and describes what feels like stepping into a different world.

1:01 The climate warms, snow turns to rain, and the trees become massive.

1:07 He sees raging rivers fed entirely by melting

1:10 snow with vast stalks of beavers and salmon, forests packed with moose,

1:15 bald eagles, wolves, mountain lions, grizzly bears,

1:18 and he ponders the systems allowing this place to even exist.

1:22 What may be the volume of water contained in the immense

1:26 quantities of snow brought to the mountains from the Pacific Ocean?

1:29 These are mysterious operations on a scale so vast

1:33 that the human mind is lost in the contemplation.

1:40 Well, 200 years later, scientists are still contemplating.

1:45 (gentle music) Temperate rainforests cover less than 1% of the earth's surface.

1:51 The largest and most famous is the coastal rainforests of the Pacific Northwest,

1:56 the Redwoods, Olympic, Vancouver Island.

2:00 Here, weather systems from the Pacific smother

2:02 the coastal mountains with near constant rain and fog.

2:06 So much that by the time these weather systems pass the coast,

2:10 they're not done yet.

2:11 They keep moving inland,

2:13 eventually running into the western slopes of the Columbia and Rocky Mountains.

2:17 12,000 years ago, ice sheets covered these mountains,

2:21 carving high peaks and deep smooth valleys below them.

2:25 As Pacific weather systems reach these mountains,

2:27 they drop rain in the spring and buckets of snow in the winter.

2:32 That snow melts in the summer,

2:33 draining into the deepest valleys and keeping the soil moist,

2:37 despite frequent summer droughts and wildfires.

2:41 And it's in these deepest valleys where

2:44 moisture accumulates that we find the oldest forests,

2:47 allowed to evade wildfires for hundreds or even

2:51 thousands of years and develop into a lush, old-growth temperate rainforest.

2:56 This forest exists in patches across Washington, Montana and Idaho,

3:01 and reaches its fullest extent further north in British Columbia.

3:06 With 98% of the world's temperate rainforests being coastal,

3:10 the inland temperate rainforest is something completely unique,

3:14 a vast temperate rainforest more than 500 kilometers from the ocean,

3:19 and the world's only rainforest deriving

3:21 a large portion of its moisture from snow.

3:25 All of that melting snow has resulted

3:27 in a landscape connected by hundreds of waterways,

3:31 wetlands, streams, lakes, and the headwaters for three major rivers.

3:37 Well, I'm in Idaho, but certainly doesn't feel like it.

3:42 It feels more like the coast, maybe Oregon or Vancouver Island.

3:46 (gentle music) This region doesn't just experience

3:49 the weather that you would expect near the coast.

3:52 It has nearly the exact same species.

3:55 These forests are dominated by western redcedar and western hemlock,

3:59 trees mostly found on the coast.

4:01 The same goes for most of the shrubs, ferns, and mosses found here.

4:05 A lot of the birds, most mammals, and especially lichens.

4:09 The inland rainforest has one of the richest

4:12 lichen communities of any temperate forest.

4:15 And so many of these species are found nowhere except here and the coast.

4:20 So how did all of these species

4:22 make this leap several hundred kilometers inland?

4:25 These forests are believed to have formed between 6,000 and 2000 years ago,

4:30 working their way north after the retreat of the ice.

4:33 Perhaps they had existed in small patches south of the ice,

4:36 expanding north as the climate warmed.

4:39 Or maybe they came from the coast, following isolated migration roots inland.

4:44 There's evidence for both, and we're not quite sure.

4:49 These old forests provide habitat for gray wolves,

4:53 mountain lions, moose, ospreys, herons, rare bats,

4:57 rare frogs and salamanders found only here,

5:00 a brand new slug just discovered in 2018.

5:03 The colder forests at higher elevations are home to lynx and wolverines,

5:07 and the alpine tundra above is home to mountain goats and pikas.

5:12 The waterways are home to river otters, beavers, and pacific salmon.

5:17 Each year, millions of salmons swim hundreds of miles upstream to spawn,

5:21 bringing nutrients from the ocean with them.

5:24 Bald eagles and grizzly bears eat the salmon,

5:26 dragging them through the trees and allowing this entire forest to be

5:31 nourished by these nutrients from the ocean more than 500 kilometers away.

5:37 All right, I love big trees.

5:40 I just spotted these two absolute chunkers on the other side of the creek.

5:45 Look at this thing.

5:47 That's huge.

5:48 Another big one over here.

5:50 (water trickling) Nuts.

5:55 Several indigenous groups have use of this rainforest,

5:58 selectively harvesting western redcedar and turning it into homes,

6:03 canoes, cookware, and other tools.

6:06 They harvested fruits, vegetables, berries,

6:08 nuts, seeds, mushrooms, tea and salmon.

6:12 They spent winters in these deep sheltered valleys,

6:15 used the region's rivers as a transportation network,

6:18 and traded with other indigenous groups in the coastal rainforest,

6:22 hundreds of kilometers away.

6:27 The inland rainforest's strangest inhabitant is the mountain caribou.

6:31 (gentle music) Most caribou are found in the tundras further north,

6:37 migrating vast distances in large herds and digging

6:40 for plants and lichens beneath the snow.

6:43 During the winter, the mountain caribou almost exclusively

6:46 eat rainforest lichens found high in the canopy,

6:49 using the deep winter snowpack as a stepladder

6:53 to access what would normally be out of reach.

6:56 They travel in small groups and migrate vertically,

6:59 moving seasonally between the high mountains and the lush valleys below.

7:03 And their habitat range coincides so closely with the boundaries of the inland

7:08 rainforest that scientists consider them an indicator

7:11 for the health of the entire ecosystem.

7:14 Mountain caribou survived by hiding,

7:17 traversing vast, rugged areas to avoid predators.

7:22 This forest, with its steep slopes and dense vegetation,

7:26 is the perfect hiding place.

7:30 As we move into the next part of this video,

7:33 everything we've just talked about is going to change,

7:36 and you're gonna see that this rainforest story is playing out right now.

7:40 Decisions are currently being made that will decide this ecosystem's future.

7:45 So my research for this story includes plenty of books and studies,

7:49 but also a wide range of news articles about those decisions,

7:53 and that's where Ground News comes in.

7:55 Ground News is the sponsor of this video.

7:57 It's a website and an app that aggregates

8:00 news stories from all around the world.

8:02 It tells you about different outlets' political leanings,

8:04 their credibility and factuality, and even who they're owned by.

8:08 Recently, the Biden administration banned new offshore

8:11 drilling projects for most of the U.S.

8:13 coastline.

8:13 The story's been covered by 477 sources

8:17 with a pretty even mix of left and right-leaning, and many in the center.

8:21 Alternet on the left focuses on the benefits for ocean conservation,

8:24 while right-leaning Fox Business focuses on the criticism from industry.

8:29 One cool feature is blind spots,

8:31 which highlights stories disproportionately covered

8:33 by one side of the political aisle,

8:36 like this story from just a couple weeks ago about the Forest

8:39 Service withdrawing a plan to strengthen protections of old growth forests.

8:43 This story is actually very relevant to this video.

8:46 You'll see that later on.

8:47 These tools are helping me to broaden the stories that I'm

8:50 consuming and stay more informed on environmental science and just general news.

8:55 Right now, Ground News is offering 40% off of their Vantage plan,

8:59 using the link in the description of this video.

9:02 That's all of the tools we just talked about for just $5 a month.

9:05 That link is ground.news/aidin or you can just scan the QR code on screen.

9:11 It's thanks to sponsors like Ground News that I

9:14 can go to these places and tell these stories.

9:16 So thank you again for making this one

9:18 possible and just helping me to stay informed.

9:22 Following Thompson's expeditions,

9:24 fur trading dominated this region's economy until the mid 1800s,

9:28 when mining booms brought a new wave of settlers to the Rockies.

9:32 They cleared small sections of forests to build homes and farms,

9:35 mostly in these fertile and easily accessible valleys.

9:39 They hunted caribou and fished for salmon,

9:42 and they set up small sawmills to supply local communities.

9:46 In the late 1800s railroads crossed the Rocky Mountains,

9:49 opening this region for more intensive settlement.

9:53 Since the 1860s, the country's timber industry

9:55 had been concentrated around the Great Lakes,

9:58 much of it under the control of a single company called Weyerhaeuser.

10:02 But by the end of the century,

10:03 the forests around the Great Lakes have been depleted,

10:06 and timber companies were looking for new land elsewhere.

10:10 They heard of a vast untouched forest in the northwest and began

10:14 buying up huge chunks of land and buying up these small local sawmills.

10:19 They even set up fake homesteads,

10:22 paying settlers to build crude shacks at the intersection of four plots of land,

10:26 forging documents to qualify all forest homesteads, and then logging the land.

10:32 In just a few years, the timber industry had acquired vast sections of forest,

10:36 but with rugged terrain and no roads, harvesting it seemed impossible.

10:41 The solution was to use the countless waterways connecting this region.

10:46 They started with trees on the edges of lakes and rivers,

10:49 dumping them in the water to be floated to sawmills downstream.

10:53 Logs would often get stuck and pile up,

10:55 so men nicknamed river pigs guided them downstream,

10:59 wearing spiked boots to walk on top of the logs as they rolled,

11:03 breaking up log jams, sometimes using dynamite to do so,

11:07 and risking drowning or being crushed if they slipped in.

11:12 Once the timber at the water's edge was gone,

11:14 they pushed deeper into the forest,

11:17 targeting the most accessible sites in the lowest valleys,

11:20 and building small railroads and water flues to move logs to the river banks.

11:26 Loggers worked in temporary camps,

11:28 moving from site to site as forests were depleted.

11:31 They worked 10 hour days, six days a week,

11:33 sleeping on straw mattresses in tents or crude

11:37 bunk houses and unable to bathe or do laundry.

11:40 Within a decade, timber had become the region's main industry,

11:44 with more than 300 sawmills employing half of the people living here,

11:48 and companies continuing to merge and buy land.

11:51 At the same time, the Roosevelt administration was investigating fraud,

11:55 indicting companies and politicians,

11:57 and working with the newly created Forest Service

12:00 to create tens of millions of acres of national forests,

12:03 including 10 right here in the inland rainforest.

12:07 By the 1910s, timber companies had already

12:09 spent millions of dollars just accessing these forests.

12:13 Shipping wood out of Idaho was expensive, and demand for lumber in the U.S.

12:18 was falling.

12:19 But supply and competition continued to rise.

12:22 Timber companies tried to compensate by cutting faster,

12:25 but that just sank prices even more.

12:28 And that was all before the Great Depression.

12:31 Mills closed, large temper companies declared bankruptcy,

12:35 and the timber industry and the inland rainforest dried up.

12:40 (car chiming) (door thudding) (engine rumbling) The Second

12:51 World War brought a renewed demand for lumber.

12:54 Bulldozers, trucks, and retired military machinery

12:58 allowed access to more remote locations.

13:00 A vast network of forest roads began to cut through this region.

13:04 Loggers switched from harvesting individual trees to clearcutting entire stands.

13:09 Faster harvests and roads connecting the region

13:12 allowed for even more consolidation of the industry

13:15 into fewer and larger companies and the disappearance of even more local mills.

13:21 Within a few decades, privately owned forests in the northwest were depleted,

13:25 so timber companies started putting pressure on the Forest Service

13:28 to significantly ramp up logging in the national forests, and they did.

13:34 At the same time, a conservation movement was growing in the U.S.

13:39 Scientists and economists were publishing reports that the national

13:42 forests were being overcut and citizens were protesting.

13:46 The eventual result was a dramatic reduction of logging in national forests.

13:51 But much of the damage was already done.

13:55 Today in Idaho, old-growth forests exist in small patches,

14:00 separated by clear-cuts, uniform stands of young trees, and forest roads.

14:07 Dams have flooded vast sections of rainforest,

14:11 submerging valleys and ending the salmon migration in several rivers.

14:17 Indigenous groups have been driven from their traditional territories,

14:20 with some communities wiped out entirely.

14:25 Only a small handful of grizzly bears remain in Idaho,

14:28 and in 1983, mountain caribou were listed as endangered,

14:33 with fewer than 30 animals in the South Selkirk herd, the only herd in the U.S.

14:39 Those that survive continue to do so by hiding

14:43 in the most remote valleys and the mountains above.

14:46 (wind howling) (contemplative music) Now remember,

15:13 what makes mountain caribou so unique is

15:15 that their main food source is canopy lichens,

15:19 and many of these lichen species only grow in old-growth forests.

15:23 So the lichen are dependent on the oldest forests.

15:27 The caribou are dependent on the lichen.

15:29 And across the region,

15:30 much of the rainforest that is protected has been set aside as caribou habitat.

15:36 So without the caribou, those protections can be removed.

15:39 The result is this ecological house of cards.

15:43 Lose the oldest forests and you lose the rest too.

15:47 Logging and replanting forests creates what are called early seral ecosystems,

15:53 places with small trees and shrubs, the very beginning of a forest.

15:58 These provide nothing for caribou, but they're perfect food for deer and moose.

16:03 Widespread conversion of old-growth to young forests has

16:07 resulted in booming populations of deer and moose,

16:10 which means more prey for wolves and mountain lions.

16:13 So their populations have grown too.

16:16 And wolves and mountain lions also eat caribou.

16:20 So as these forests have become increasingly fragmented,

16:23 caribou have been pushed into smaller

16:26 pockets of old-growth forest with less food, surrounded by more predators.

16:33 In 2019, a female caribou was captured near the Idaho-Canada

16:37 border and relocated to a recovery program further north.

16:42 The last caribou gone from the contiguous United States.

16:46 (dramatic music) The good news is that this story isn't over.

17:10 Further north in British Columbia, where this forest is at its biggest and best,

17:14 large chunks of old-growth forest still make up much of the landscape.

17:19 The caribou and grizzly bears are still here, and the ecosystem is still intact.

17:25 For now.

17:26 Since the 1970s, the rate of logging here has doubled,

17:29 most of it coming from old-growth forests.

17:32 And since 1990, mountain caribou populations have been cut in half,

17:36 with fewer than 1,500 remaining.

17:39 Some of Canada's first national parks were in this region,

17:42 and more than 700,000 acres of caribou habitat have been protected.

17:47 Just last year, British Columbia protected a 750 square kilometer area,

17:51 including old-growth forests and caribou habitat.

17:55 But even if we stopped logging the inland rainforest tomorrow,

17:59 the large areas of connected old forest required

18:03 for a stable caribou population will take decades to develop.

18:07 By the time their habitat regenerates, the caribou will already be gone.

18:14 So governments, conservation groups, and several of British Columbia's First

18:19 Nations have begun experimenting with intervention.

18:22 This study from last year analyzed

18:24 the various methods for boosting caribou populations,

18:27 and found one method that consistently worked, killing wolves.

18:33 With a lot of conservation debates focusing

18:35 on the reintroduction of wolves and other large predators,

18:39 this is quite the reversal, and it's been met with plenty of controversy.

18:44 Other interventions include supplemental feeding and transferring pregnant

18:48 caribou to enclosures where they can safely give birth.

18:51 Ultimately, the biggest finding from this study is that intervention works.

18:56 It's just a matter of choosing whether or not we wanna apply it.

19:01 The ball is in Canada's court, but the U.S.

19:03 is not off the hook.

19:05 Old-growth forests have pretty good protections down here,

19:08 but mature forests don't.

19:11 These are the forests that are almost back to old-growth conditions,

19:15 and timber continues to be harvested from them.

19:17 (gentle music) Over the last two years, the Forest Service has been preparing

19:21 an amendment strengthening their old-growth protections,

19:24 and more than a million Americans have

19:26 asked them to include mature forests as well.

19:30 But just a couple weeks ago,

19:31 rather than announcing such an amendment, they abruptly dropped the entire plan.

19:40 Right now, we are collectively deciding how we should engage with this forest.

19:46 And standing here, I feel it too.

19:50 I'm hundreds of miles from the ocean, but drops of it are falling.

19:54 Salmon will bring its nutrients to these streams,

19:57 bears and eagles will move those nutrients into this forest.

20:02 This forest will grow lichens in its canopy.

20:06 Caribou will eat those lichens to survive,

20:09 and their survival may decide what my species

20:12 chooses to do with this entire ecosystem.

20:16 This place feels so connected.

20:18 Every piece of it fits together so well.

20:22 And then there's me.

20:22 (engine rumbling) I travel on logging roads and maintain trails.

20:27 I tread carefully but imperfectly.

20:31 And sometimes I look around and wonder, what am I doing here?

20:36 I believe others must have felt this too.

20:39 The fur trappers, the loggers, the scientists,

20:45 they must have felt this place around them and asked the same questions.

20:50 What are we doing here?

20:52 What should we do here?

20:54 What will we do here?

20:56 And whoever ends up answering those questions,

20:59 deciding what we'll do with the world's strangest rainforest,

21:05 I hope they felt this too.

21:07 (dramatic music) (wind howling)