(birds chirping)
- As a wildlife filmmaker,
I've been blessed beyond my wildest dreams
to get to travel all over the world
filming incredible wildlife and conservation stories.
So, the more and more I traveled,
the more focus I wanted to turn back
on Texas, my home state.
The first thing that came to mind was Big Bend.
From my very first time going out there with my family
when I was younger,
it just stuck with me and I wanted to go back.
I wanted to go back.
Here's Big Bend, this amazing and incredible place
where rivers, and mountains, and desert habitats collide,
creating this just perfect place for
an abundance of biodiversity.
And no one has really told these stories in depth.
Some of my favorite memories of making
the whole film about Big Bend
are being out there with the bears.
Making sure to find that right balance of being
close enough that we can bring viewers
intimately into the world of the bears,
but at the same time not doing anything
that's gonna bother the bears or put the bears off.
I knew for sure that we were doing things right
and that these bears with okay with us
when they started just taking naps in front of us.
Sometimes they just get a belly full of acorns
and need a nap.
And so they lay down and so you're like,
okay, I guess I'm gonna, you know, stand still.
Because you know, you certainly don't want to
spook or wake up a sleeping bear either.
One morning pretty early on in the project,
we were at Santa Elena Canyon at dawn.
And we saw a beaver and it was still active
just for a few minutes after sunrise.
You know, beavers are a nocturnal animal
and I thought this is it.
It's just kind of the beavers getting ready
to go to bed for the night.
What a beautiful moment.
Let's capture this.
Let's tell the story.
It was a story we knew was gonna be a challenge.
I had to wake up at four in the morning,
trudging out there in the dark,
trying to get everything ready and set up.
And then I would kneel down in the mud
and just quietly wait for the sun to come up.
Some mornings the beavers would go to sleep
before the sun had even come up.
Other mornings we might get 10-15 minutes
of beavers being active.
I would completely lose myself there
with this family of beavers because
here I am literally straddling an international border
and these beautiful beavers that are
just going about their business
the way that they always have.
And to me it was the most peaceful place on earth.
(water splashing)
Especially over the last four or five years,
it's been a hot topic.
And to me, when I think about the US/Mexico border,
I think about these kind of beautiful places.
Big Bend National Park is a really incredible place.
And because it's so far off the beaten path,
making a film like this is our chance
to bring people to Big Bend who might not otherwise
ever make it to this remote corner of the US.