Forget the glitz of Sunset Strip and the chi-chi Rodeo drive, Californians are heading for the hills in the Old West, but can the wide open spaces support the population boom? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, resettling the frontiers. Also, how America's first naturalists tamed the wilderness.

Rick Knight, a wildlife biologist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, tells Steve Paulson about the new immigrants to the intermountain west and the damage they're doing to the environment they came to enjoy. Also, British writer Jonathan Raban tells Jim Fleming about the landscape and history of settlement in eastern Montana. Raban's new book is "Badlands: An American Romance."

Alan Taylor, a historian at the University of California at Davis, tells Judith Strasser about an early American land speculator and the subject of his book - "William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic." Cooperstown is best known today as the site of the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Thomas Slaughter teaches history at Rutgers and is the author of "The Natures of John and William Bartram." He tells Steve Paulson the story of the men he considers America's first naturalists.

Distribution dates:

• week of 08/30/98 - hour 3