- “The American Southwest” is a new film that explores the importance of the Colorado River in western North America to people and to wildlife.
- Part natural history film, part social documentary, it explores the challenges the Colorado faces as its resources are stretched thin by the demands for cities, energy and agriculture.
- Negotiations over the river’s water after a current agreement expires at the end of 2026 offer an opportunity for more equitable sharing that includes the river itself and long-marginalized representation from the Native tribes who live along the river’s length.
- The film appeared in theaters beginning Sept. 5 and on streaming platforms Oct. 10.
At its roots, The American Southwest, from Fin and Fur Films, is a natural history documentary.
“I’m a wildlife guy,” says director Ben Masters, who founded Fin and Fur in 2012.
His infatuation with nature comes through in the film’s exploration of the southwestern United States, traced along the path of the Colorado River from its headwaters in the Never Summer range of the Rocky Mountains to its delta in the Gulf of California. Along the way, we find a watershed teeming with life.
In three years of filming, his team captured visually astounding sequences of bull elk (Cervus canadensis) clashing in battle, of beavers (Castor canadensis) toppling trees to tailor their habitat to their needs, and of a nail-biting struggle of a young California condor (Gymnogyps californianus) on a cliff at Navajo Bridge.
The filmmakers manage to engage the audience in the stories of each species they spend time with, whether the deadly Mojave rattlesnake (Crotalus scutulatus) in California’s largest desert, Arizona’s life-supporting saguaro cacti (Carnegiea gigantea), or the humble salmonfly (Pteronarcys spp.) linking the aquatic environment with the terrestrial.
This biological vibrancy is a stark contrast to the images the filmmakers have also included of a river that’s worn down by the time it reaches its terminus. As the Colorado flows through Arizona, California and Nevada — three of the seven states it touches, in addition to Mexico — cities, utilities and agriculture have drawn so much of its water that little remains for the river itself, or the peoples who have long lived along its length and stewarded the broader watershed for centuries.
Throughout, The American Southwest returns to the issue of the Colorado River Compact, an agreement forged in 1922 to divide up 7.5 million acre-feet (around 9.3 billion cubic meters) of the river’s water. Discussions currently in progress will determine how the resource, so vital to a thirsty section of the U.S., will be shared after the current set of agreements expires. But the filmmakers point out that the negotiations have long operated with assumptions relying on outdated estimates of water availability, needs and aging infrastructure, and too often have failed to include the voices of the peoples living along the Colorado River.
Today, Native American tribes are supposed to have rights to around 25% of the Colorado River. But investigations have revealed that some tribes aren’t receiving their allotted amounts as a decades-long drought strains the river’s flow.
For their part, the Aha Macav (Fort Mojave Indian Tribe), the “people along the river,” are advocating to maintain the natural flow of the river where possible. They see themselves as stewards of the river, a role they’ve held for perhaps 8,000 years. Leaders cite past examples of colonialist exploitation, such as the harvest of beavers for the fur trade, for spurring advocacy for the Colorado that continues to this day.
In spite of these struggles, Masters and his team argue that an opportunity exists with the current negotiations to both rectify past wrongs and learn from past civilizations.
“Strangely, the film has made me very pro-human and pro-stability,” Masters tells Mongabay.
Alongside the wildlife documented in the film are the stories of the peoples who have depended on the Colorado River watershed for centuries before European-descended peoples arrived in the region. Masters credits a collaboration with Native scholars and filmmakers for the path the film took and the lessons it tries to impart. Producer Len Necefer’s NativesOutdoors collective had a strong influence on the film, Masters says, and connected Fin and Fur with narrator Quannah ChasingHorse, who is Han Gwich’in and Sicangu and Oglala Lakota.
Humans’ long history with the landscape has provided a source of hope for Masters, one that offers an alternative path for both the Colorado and the region it travels through.
“We don’t have to live in an increasingly dry southwest. That’s a choice,” Masters says. “We can also manage to have abundant rivers and phenomenal wildlife.”
The American Southwest opened in theaters on Sept. 5, and has been available for streaming since Oct. 10.
The following interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Mongabay: Let’s start with your relationship with the Colorado River and the U.S. Southwest. What drew you to make this film, and why now?
Ben Masters: Before I got into film, I was a horse trainer, and I had the interesting idea to ride a horse from Mexico to Canada, so I’ve actually ridden through New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and Utah. I have spent months on end just in the wilderness and in the public lands. I love the Southwest — the wildlife, the scenery, the way that just the land unfolds. I think it’s unlike any other place.
After the success of our previous film, Deep in the Heart: A Texas Wildlife Story, I was asked to make a blue-chip natural history film on the Southwest to try to advocate for several different conservation opportunities that exist there. Obviously, I was like, “Absolutely, I would love to make this film.” We spent three years creating the storyline for the movie, filming the movie, bringing it into the edit … It’s been really cool to see people’s response to it. I’m immensely proud of this movie.
Mongabay: What led to the Colorado River being this thread that ties the story together, from its origins in the Rockies down to Mexico?
Ben Masters: We focused our storyline around the Colorado River because I feel like rivers represent an ecosystem. Everything flows downriver and gathers into the Colorado, and I think that it is an indicator of ecosystem health and societal health, probably more than any other entity.
I think the fact that the Colorado River dies — it is entirely consumed and entirely exhausted — is an indication, a very strong one, that we need to change the river’s management, not just for the health of the river, but for the health of who we are as a culture and as a society.
Mongabay: From the wildlife side, how did you choose the species to include?
Ben Masters: We identified the species in the film based off elevation. We wanted to have some that were representative of a mountainous ecosystem and canyon land and desert. We had our own little ambassador species for each different ecosystem, and we identified species and behaviors that represented more than just a cool critter doing something interesting in a beautiful place.
We tried to identify different species that represented the area, plus a social issue that we could wrap into it.
Mongabay: Like the salmon fly?
Ben Masters: We actually chose that because it represents the bounty of a healthy river, but also because there are hundreds of miles of western rivers where the salmon flies don’t exist anymore because of dams. [Losing that link in the] food web then robs the trout, robs the ospreys and the bald eagles and the otters.
Mongabay: What was filming the California condors like?
Ben Masters: The condor sequence is one of my favorites because it’s so amazing that they didn’t go extinct. There were 22 birds left in the entire world. This massive effort began to bring them back, and now there are about 100 in Arizona and Utah. It just so happened that one of the nests was in this extremely viewable location at the Navajo Bridge [that connects the Navajo Nation with Glen Canyon National Recreation Area], and we filmed the condor sequence for about 80 or so days. Our goal was to film this baby condor take its first flight, and what we ended up filming instead was this horrible drop to its near-death as it fell off a cliff. It was something that obviously we would never guess or want to have happen.
Then, we were able to follow along as it climbed its way back to the nest and rejoined its parents. It was just crazy footage.
Mongabay: I can only imagine the gasps that must come through as people see that in theaters.
Ben Masters: It’s really fun watching the audience on the edge of their seat, and there are always some kids who start screaming.
Mongabay: I noticed the subtitle of the film is A River Ran Through It. Is there anything to that being phrased in the past tense?
Ben Masters: That’s kind of a play on the words of Norman McLean’s book A River Runs Through It. But it also kind of [foreshadows] in the film what happens. It’s surprising to me that there are still a lot of people who don’t know that the Colorado River is entirely consumed and not a single drop makes it to the sea.
Mongabay: At the same time, producer Len Necefer said in an interview, the film “isn’t a eulogy. It’s an invitation.” It does seem like you make the case that the river is worth saving — and that it’s possible.
Ben Masters: Oh, most definitely, I think that the film does a very good job of making the case that we need to recover the river.
Mongabay: You also call this a social documentary, and you’ve talked about this unconventional structure of weaving together wildlife stories with our impacts as society. Can you talk a little bit about how you landed on that form?
Ben Masters: The movie follows two main stories. The first is the journey of the river from source to sea. And then the second story that’s a little bit more abstract is our evolving relationship with the natural world as a society. So the film really begins with colonization and the destruction of most of our megafauna told through an elk story. And then in the early 1900s, we began to recover wildlife.
And then it also dives into how our relationship with water is a lot different. We haven’t figured out how to recover the ecosystems that the water really nourishes. Most of our rivers in the West don’t support their native species. They don’t have a lot of the native fish that lived there, and a lot of the aquatic insects have also been lost. That’s due to dams and diversions and canals that began really early in the 1900s that were engineered by people who, in their defense, didn’t know that the ecological destruction would be that great.
Now, we’re at the situation in 2025 where we have a Colorado River management plan that is based off a compact that was made in 1922 with data that is severely outdated, as well as infrastructure with these dams and canals that’s 100 years old. As our values have changed over the last 100 years, the management of the Colorado River has not changed drastically. It’s still stuck in the confines of the 1922 compact.
That’s what’s really exciting about the movie. We timed it to release right before the 2026 Colorado River renegotiations, where all of the different states are actively trying to figure out, “How can we manage the river better?” What I’m hoping is for this film to influence a lot of those representatives, as well as people within the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Reclamation, to really value having environmental flows and dedicating a percentage of the river that goes to the sea so that it can actually fulfill its journey.
We don’t have to live in an increasingly dry Southwest. That’s a choice. We can also manage to have abundant rivers and phenomenal wildlife.
Mongabay: Do you think there’s adequate awareness of that ecological need for water for the river itself?
Ben Masters: I think there’s probably more knowledge around the need to dedicate water for the river itself now than there has been in the last century.There have been several thousand people who have signed our online petition encouraging these different states’ representatives to dedicate more water to river health. And then on top of that, we’ve gotten the film in front of a lot of very influential people through invitations to different screenings. Within the water policymaker world, there’s been a lot of talk on how we can manage the river better, for wildlife and for river health.
The reality is that a very large amount of the water is used by California and then exported overseas in the form of alfalfa primarily. Is that the best use of this most vital, critical resource in the West, to export it to foreign countries to be used for livestock feed? For me, no, that’s not the best use of the water. And if there’s enough water for that, there for damn sure should be enough water to be dedicated for the river.
Mongabay: That’s something I learned from the film — just how much water goes to alfalfa hay fields in dry Southern California, and that a third of that is exported for livestock. And it’s also pretty inefficient to grow that, compared to more drought-tolerant crops like squash or turnips?
Ben Masters: Yeah, it’s extremely inefficient. But alfalfa also goes overseas and out of the basin. [With] a lot of the farms in the lower basin, the water is taken outside of the river’s basin. It’s used, and then it never goes back into the river.
Mongabay: In addition to the lack of the river’s ecological rights to water, you also note that tribal nations had been excluded from negotiations in the 1920s.
Ben Masters: There’s so much to unpack about how the United States was colonized and the treatment of the Indigenous folks who have lived here for thousands of years. But I think one of the really missed opportunities is for Western science and Western policymakers to talk to Native groups about historical knowledge.
When we were filming on the Navajo Nation, we met one of our guides who could trace his family’s lineage back to that area to the 1200s. Folks have been passing on those stories through rocks or petroglyphs and pictographs and oral stories. There is knowledge that if you live out of balance with the world, it’s really, really bad for your society, and can lead to drought and famine and societal upheaval. That’s documented in the 1200s and 1300s when Chaco Canyon collapsed, and there was a tremendous amount of suffering and violence in the region that is still known to the Native people who live there.
I feel like we’re kind of missing out on some opportunities to properly value that knowledge. Their descendants are here with us today, warning us not to use all the water. Don’t set yourself up for failure whenever there’s a bad drought. I just think it’s a terrible shame that the Colorado River Compact was planned and divided without any tribal representation at all whatsoever, despite the fact that there are tens of millions of acres of sovereign tribal nations within the Colorado River Basin.
Mongabay: With the film itself, how did you try to include Indigenous voices?
Ben Masters: I really wanted to incorporate Indigenous storylines and historical perspective, but that’s not my culture. That’s not my history. I’m a ninth-generation Texan. I met Len Necefer. Len’s from the Navajo Nation, and he has a production company based in Tucson that has a dozen or so different creatives that are all Native folks in the Southwest. I asked Len to be our producer and help guide the film and produce the petroglyph sequence at Bears Ears. It was so good working with him and his team. [The Native-led collective] NativesOutdoors brought in Quannah ChasingHorse as narrator, and she did a phenomenal job with the narration performance. It was fantastic.
Mongabay: A poignant part of the film is the realization that humans have learned some of these lessons in the past.
Ben Masters: Strangely, the film has made me very pro-human and pro-stability. I’m a wildlife guy. I love wildlife, but just seeing how fragile the system is — if you had five or seven years where there was only 5 million to 7 million acre-feet [6.2 billion to 8.6 billion cubic meters] of water that fell in the basin, there’s not water for everybody. We’re going to hit a drought like that. There’s no reservoir storage that’s a bank against that.
Yeah, the film has made me realize the social stability that depends on the Colorado River. It’s kind of scary how fragile it is.
Mongabay: You also note the loss of water that occurs in these reservoirs.
Ben Masters: Storing water in reservoirs is like storing your savings in an account where 10% of your savings evaporates annually. It’s a terrible way to store water.
Mongabay: Are there signs of increased inclusion of tribal representation?
Ben Masters: I think times have changed a lot. I think there’s still a tremendous amount of improvement that should be done in giving tribal voices more of a say in land management. There’s the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, which we worked with and which has several different tribes working on the Bears Ears [cultural landscape in Utah], as well as some of the water issues there. Colorado has some tribal representation on how they manage their water. So there’s some. I would like to see more.
Banner image: An elk in the Rocky Mountains, where the headwaters of the Colorado River lie. Image courtesy of Fin and Fur Films.
John Cannon is a staff features writer with Mongabay. Find him on Bluesky and LinkedIn.
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