New documentary traces the Colorado River’s wildlife and a history of human overuse

Making a wildlife film can take you to some fascinating places. From waiting weeks for an elk battle, to getting inside of a snake hole, or under a beaver dam.

Ben Masters specializes in just that.

Masters makes wildlife films, and his latest — “The American Southwest” — hits home

It takes viewers on a trip down the Colorado River, tracing its history and confronting the impact of overuse. It’s narrated by Indigenous actress and activist Quannah Chasinghorse.

“Water is the divine force in this unforgiving landscape,” Chasinghorse says in the film. “It is the most essential and precious resource that has supported humanity for over 1,000 generations.”

The Show spoke with Masters more about it.

Fin & Fur Film

Full conversation

BEN MASTERS: The American Southwest follows two storylines. One is the Colorado River’s journey from its headwaters in the Rockies down to the Gulf of California. And then the other is our society’s influence on the river and the wildlife, both good and bad.

And I framed it that way because it was kind of a natural journey. Let’s chronologically begin the film with how Native peoples utilized elk and then, how during colonization, the elk were completely wiped out. But our society is also capable of these amazing wildlife recoveries, and to show the elk recover. And then to follow the river’s journey through these different wildlife stories, whether it’s a beaver creating wetlands or the salmon fly doing this ancient metamorphosis or condors flying through the Grand Canyon.

And then along the way, we can see the river get dammed and diverted and canaled and used by cities and piped out of the basins and so thoroughly exhausted that this heartbeat of the Southwest is entirely consumed.

GILGER: Yeah, that’s what struck me about it, because when I as a journalist in the Southwest talk about the Colorado River, it is almost always about the management of it, right? And this kind of debate, these tough negotiations that are going on between policymakers in Washington and the federal government and local leaders and all these interest groups and tribes who want a piece of the river. And how they’re going to shake that out, we still don’t know.

But your film looks at the river in such a different way in terms of water and the importance of it and the power of it in these kinds of desert regions. 

MASTERS: Yeah, the river should have water in it. I mean, I think everybody agrees to that, but we’re just trapped in this antiquated river management system that’s based on values and infrastructure that’s over 100 years old, and it’s just in dire need of new management.

I mean, the river should have water in it, and the thing that frustrates me is if there’s truly a shortage of water in the southwest, why are there hundreds of thousands of acre feet getting exported overseas in the form of alfalfa? That’s, by definition, a surplus.

GILGER: I want to ask you, Ben, about how you shot this. And, as you shoot wildlife films in general. You’re underwater, you’ve got, it looks like cameras inside snake holes, you’re in the air with birds, you’re looking at teeny tiny insects. There’s such a craft to this, I’m sure. How do you shoot this stuff?

MASTERS: So we identified the main storyline, and then we identified how we’re going to shoot it, and here’s what is going to be required, here’s the tools and the amount of time. And then the really fun part began of actually being in the field and spending 70 days waiting for the condor to fledge and take its first flight or three weeks trying to get an epic fight with the elk during the rut or doing speed dating with Mojave rattlesnakes trying to find a match.

Once we figured out how to film the behavior that we were dealing with, which we relied very heavily on biologists and NGOs for that intel on how to get the behaviors. Once we identified that, then we were like, “All right, what kind of gear do we need? How much time do we need to dedicate?” And that was the fun part was spending hundreds of days in the woods filming wildlife.

GILGER: I’m sure it was hundreds of days literally for sure. Do you have any favorite moments you captured, favorite animals or favorite characters?

MASTERS: Oh gosh, I think that getting some of the jaguar footage has to be right up there at the top moments of my life. I mean, getting to see borderlands jaguars in 8K on an 80-inch monitor and just looking at it like, “Holy smokes, that is a real life animal. That is the coolest thing I have ever seen.”

GILGER: Yeah, it is. Let me ask you about Quannah Chasinghorse as your narrator. I mean, she’s an interesting figure in the Indigenous communities across the country right now. Why choose her voice? 

MASTERS: So I am a white guy from Amarillo, Texas. And I’ve always wanted to partner with an Indigenous group. I was at a film festival, and there was a fellow by the name there called Dr. Len Necefer, who started Natives Outdoors, and he was giving a presentation on how to incorporate Native storylines into movies. Afterwards, I went and told him about this film that we were making, and that began an amazing collaboration with Natives Outdoors.

They consulted on script, brought in a lot of their shooters — they’re based in Tucson — as well as bringing in Quannah Chasinghorse and having her narrate the film. In my opinion, I feel like Quannah delivered one of the most beautiful wildlife narration performances and possibly one of the most beautiful film narration performances. It’s so good, and she just put so much heart and emotion into each of the lines. It was a real cool experience to work with her.

GILGER: It’s really cool. Let me ask you, Ben, about I guess the point here. You talk about conservation. I think in the film you call it a call to action for conserving these wild areas, these wild animals, and the river itself. How do you view film’s role in that debate over conservation and what should be our priorities moving forward?

MASTERS: I feel like storytelling has almost become equally or more important than science and research, and that pains me to say that because I feel like science and research and making informed decisions and bringing concrete data to policymakers is so critically important.

But this isn’t a surprise to anybody. There’s people that don’t understand how to read science, or they question it, or they think it’s biased. And then there’s also the reality that a lot of science is way underfunded, or they’re getting their funding cut.

And I think that it’s just really important to tell these stories and connect people in ways that’s not data-driven. But anybody that stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon, they know it’s important. Anybody that lives in the Southwest that has seen the tracks of a jaguar in a sandy wash, they know that that mountain range is wilder and more wonderful because of that animal’s presence.

And I feel like films, they tap into that emotional connection to the land in a way that science and data just can’t do. And it creates a love for one’s home that I feel taps into something really primal within people, and it creates this urge to do as much as we can to conserve it and to conserve its water.