Wild West: America's Great Frontier

This opening episode guides viewers through desert heartlands, travelling from the cold, high deserts of Nevada to the giant cactus-studded lands of Arizona and the scorching Mojave Desert in California. It will show how some of America's most iconic animals and plants, like mustangs and coyotes, desert tortoises and giant cactuses, have all learned to survive here. Their unique way of life reveals how timing, patience, cunning tactics and sheer bravery can make all the difference in this land where food and water are always in short supply.

America's high country is the land of grizzly bears and giant trees, of frigid winters and scorching summers, of tough ranchers and gold rush fever. From the Rockies to the Sierra Nevada, survival demandsendurance and know-how. From parasitic plants to thieving black bears, tenacious pikas and battling bison, it's in the high country that the west gets really wild.

From the mysterious Sea of Cortez to the wild and elemental Pacific Ocean, powerful earth forces shape the coastline of the wild west. These restless shores are a magnet for life; visited by the greatest of all animals, the blue whale, and by strange fish that come ashore on the full moon to spawn in their thousands. Fog-shrouded headlands nurture massive coastal redwoods and swollen-nosed lizards eke out a living on remote desert islands.