The new documentary “Preserved” explores the evolution of Ted Turner’sVermejo Ranch in northern New Mexico from a landscape damaged by mining, to a pristine wilderness of half a million acres. Director Ben Clark, an adventure filmmaker and Himalayan ski mountaineer, talked to KUNM about his inspiration for making the film.
BEN_CLARK: I had spent so many years as a professional ski mountaineer, making films in the Himalayas and running across Bhutan. I spent all this time working in nature, but I didn't know anything about ecology. But I didn't know anything about the natural systems, and I definitely didn't know anything about agriculture or land management, which are such incredible tenants of our private land, you know, across the United States. And when I had an opportunity to visit Vermejo on a separate project, I realized that this was the largest example of restoration, you know, the largest inland trout restoration in history. And this just huge living laboratory had been constructed just for the purpose of really trying to figure out, if we let nature totally be optimized, what would that look like, and how would that be? And I was just completely hooked. I thought, “Well, I wouldn't understand this,” and I want to share this with other people and get them excited. Why is
KUNM: Why is Vermejo Ranch so unusual?
CLARK: It's a working landscape, but the work going on out there is based on conservation. Ted Turner bought this piece of property 30 years ago. He wanted to see, could we restore a landscape like this that's had coal mining, railroads, you know, natural gas, like all these different things that exist, that are going to exist everywhere. But can we also still get beyond that? Will the animals be able to find their correct balance. Will the streams come back? Will the foliage come back? We start to see the cottonwoods and the willows, all these things. It's really set apart, because here we see nature completely running the course. We see nature being the entire reason as to why it is that this piece of property was acquired, as opposed to, ultimately, you know, more commercial activity, which it has to still operate alongside. It's become the pinnacle of conservation in the US, for exactly that reason.
KUNM: Why do the practices here offer a blueprint for ecological restoration elsewhere?
CLARK: Because of the scale of what's been done here. It takes a lot of effort, and partners such as New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, Parks and Wildlife, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, like all these different entities, are already doing this really fantastic work all across New Mexico and all across the country, but here we see it at such a large scale, when these partnerships are working together, and when the natural balance of animals is allowed to flourish in just an independent piece of property that's not disconnected. Often we see public land and private land, and we'll see habitats on both. And the public land may be better for some wildlife, but here we see a place where when wildlife come, they're sticking around, the habitat's really good. And when we see these things achieved at scale, we can certainly see how we can drop those down to smaller places and smaller use cases across the country, and modify practices that might be happening there and in time, likely produce a result that is what we're looking for. Even though the context may be different.
KUNM: You've been all over the world to some of the most spectacular places. What stood out for you visiting this place?
CLARK: I decided to make a film about Vermejo because I'd never seen anywhere like this place. I've never seen somewhere across any country, and especially the United States, where I could go see pronghorn, bears, mountain lions, bobcats. Like all of this in one morning. The lack of human pressure there, you feel it because you don't see anyone all day long. The scale of it just felt like such an increasingly complex thing to try to share with people. And I like a big challenge, and I just felt like in this the challenge would be, can we reduce this down to something people could watch in 94 minutes, and can we also tell people about this science that's going on without it feeling like a lecture. And the reason it's been successful across the country is we're celebrating a really beautiful place to go, with a lot of wonderful people and NGOs and governmental agencies accomplishing something and setting the course of the future on a different path that we can see. And I felt like for my generation, I'm in my mid-40s, I feel like we need to see these better stories, and we need to be reaching bigger audiences with these stories that are successful in order to continue to inspire people, not only to love the land that they enjoy recreating or experiencing or working, but also to understand that, hey, we can steward this stuff into a really great future if we want.
“Preserved” screens Monday night at The Guild in Albuquerque, but Clark says more showings are planned around New Mexico.
