Filmed over the course of more than six years at some of nature's most spectacular locales – from Acadia to Yosemite, Yellowstone to the Grand Canyon, the Everglades of Florida to the Gates of the Arctic in Alaska - “The National Parks: America's Best Idea” is nonetheless a story of people: people from every conceivable background – rich and poor; famous and unknown; soldiers and scientists; natives and newcomers; idealists, artists and entrepreneurs; people who were willing to devote themselves to saving some precious portion of the land they loved, and in doing so reminded their fellow citizens of the full meaning of democracy.
A husband and wife travel through the parks together over the years, with a new dog each time. We don’t see the dogs die or hear anything about it, but it’s obvious why they keep getting new ones. Furthermore, in Florida an activist’s dog is poisoned in an act of retaliation for trying to protect islands from development
Multiple people die in an expedition of the Colorado River - it doesn’t explain how they die, but it can be assumed that they drowned in the turbulent waves
Conflict between Native Americans and settlers/the military. Park Rangers were sometimes shot while defending the land from people trying to profit on it somehow