By Staff Writer Steve Scauzillo

Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan view Yosemite as the birth of an idea that grew into America’s national parks, which led to saving animal species from extinction, such as the bald eagle, and the bison and wolves of Yellowstone.

The national parks have also led to a better understanding of forest fire ecology, Duncan said. But balancing preservation with recreation is always going to be hard, they said.

Sequoia trees by Staff Photographer Walt Mancini

“Yes, we want to preserve it and we want people to come to draw sustenance from it,” Duncan said, adding that Muir, who also wrote extensively about saving the San Gabriel Mountains, had a motto: The fight for conservation will go on forever.

Returning to Yosemite Valley to shoot the film “Yosemite: A Gathering Of Spirit,” after spending 10 years making the National Parks series, Burns found himself on a hike near Bridalveil Fall with his daughter when they saw a migrant family whose daughter, about the same age as Burns’ daughter, began dancing in and out of the fall’s mist.

He said the mountains and centuries-old trees “performed open heart surgery” on him, reminding him of his own childhood and family trips to the national parks and whose hand he was holding at the time.

“We were no different,” he said after seeing the Hispanic family at the fall. “All the differences — status, class, race — were erased. I felt gladdened by that,” he said.