Using three stories from around the American West, The Next, Best West explores how the conventional concept of progress has influenced the exploitation of our natural resources, and how our collective understanding of progress is coming full circle with the promise of a brighter future. In southern Colorado, we go out on the range with a ranching family that practices a new approach that uses livestock to heal damaged places and takes a 500 year view of the future. In Eastern Montana, the American Prairie Foundation is embarking on perhaps the largest single ecosystem regeneration effort in American history. On Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, the historic Elwha River Restoration Project is the nation’s largest dam removal project to date.