Short Wave - How much has the U.S.’s wildlife changed since Lewis and Clark?

Episode Date: August 24, 2026

Ever wish you could have been part of the Lewis and Clark expedition? Us too. The Corps of Discovery came across scores of plants and animals that were new to Western science: Grizzly bears, ponderosa pines, a “barking squirrel” that William Clark would later call the prairie dog. A modern effort is underway to see how much the country’s wildlife has changed in the 220-some years since their journey. Host Nate Rott tags along with some scientists re-surveying a part of the expedition’s route in western Montana. And he wishes he was in better shape.Interested in more science in the news? Email us your question at [e-mail] public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, short wavers. It's Regina Barber here. And to my co-host here, Nate Rod and my family, Gina B. Gina B. Good name. Ginny, you're super hip with the times, right? That's what my teenage daughter says. I believe it. You've probably heard that it's the 250th birthday of these United States of America.

Yes, I live in D.C. and I did escape the 4th of July. actually. But yes, I was very aware. Fireworks everywhere. Fireworks forever. All sorts of institutions are doing stuff to celebrate this year. And one of them that we're going to be talking about had a very specific challenge. They were tasked with finding a way to commemorate the 250th scientifically. Okay. How do you do that? Well, that's exactly what Bill McShea was thinking when he got asked. It was, well, there weren't any colleges back then. You know, what part could we play? So Bill works for the Smithsonian's Conservation Biology Institute, which is part of the National Zoo, and he's a wildlife ecologist. You know, I do wildlife surveys around the world.

So he's sitting here with this question, what is he going to do? And he's stumped. And then it came out of the back of my brain. There was a major scientific-ish expedition in an early American history, Gina. Do you know what that was? I don't know yet, but I love the music. and I loved his enthusiasm. It just came out of my brain.

Yeah, well, just wait until you hear how dramatic this next bit is. To the average American of 1800, the West was a void, a black land of desolation, from when snowman foolhardy enough to march into it might return. But two Americans did lead a party into the bleakness,

setting down the facts of the wilderness. There were people there, but I'm guessing it was Lewis and Clark, because I, you know, I grew up in the Pacific, Northwest. I know all about these guys. I hear about them all the time. Yes, they are everywhere in the Western U.S. Every trailhead, every street, you name it. Yeah. And the more I looked into it, the more perfect it was because it was the first systematic natural history survey of the Western United States. Yeah. So Bill came up with this idea. What if we did another systematic survey of

that same stretch of land, 220 some years later? Retracing the route to see how much wildlife in the country has changed. I want to do it. I want to go. The good news is you can, because instead of sending a specialized team to do the survey, this time around, they're recruiting regular people like you and me and some scientists who are living along the Lewis and Clark Trail path. We want people to be aware of the wildlife around them and how it's better or worse than what it was 200 years ago. So today on the show, we tag up.

along with one group taking part in a massive scientific expedition, resurveying the Lewis and Clark Trail. Put on your hiking boots, Gina, because it's about to get steep. You're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. Okay, Nate, I have my hiking boots. Where are we going? Okay, we are going to Western Montana. Outside of the town of Lolo, we're near the Idaho border, and we're three scientists from the University of Montana, my alma mater. Go Gris.

Dino, a Romanian master student. I'm Madi Turani. I'm an assistant professor of quantitative ecology at the University of Montana. I'm Catherine Garrett. I'm a Smithsonian intern working on the Lewis and Clark Re-survey. Okay, I love this crew. They sound like super excited, smart people. They are certainly much smarter than me. I will give them that. So let's start walking, Gina. So just to set the scene for you here, Gina, we're on a dirt road surrounded by pine trees. The sun is is out. So we're mountain bikers. Okay. Good morning, guys. And we are surrounded by these orange butterflies that are fluttering all around us. So many butterflies. I know they're so beautiful.

It was incredible. Okay, what kind of butterflies are swarming us right now? So they're California tortoiseshells. I had to look it up afterwards because it was like surreal and magical. I feel like we're walking in like a fairyland. But let's not let the butterflies distract us, Gina, I'm saying that mostly to myself. Yeah. We are here to survey bigger animals. And to do that, we need to get to this GPS point that Andre is mapping us towards on his phone. Yeah.

At some point we'll have to go up on the rights. Okay, so is this GPS point someplace that Lewis and Clark went through 200 some years ago? It's around where they went. So this resurvey is being done within a 50-mile buffer around the Lewis and Clark Trail. from Pittsburgh where they prepped. That's not where the real journey started. It started in St. Louis, but they're doing this resurvey starting in Pittsburgh.

And they're doing it all the way to the Pacific Northwest, your homeland. Cool. Yes. So this is one of the areas that they did pass through. And I actually feel a little bad visiting this spot in particular because Lewis and Clark and their expedition got stuck in these mountains on their way west during an early season snowstorm. They nearly starved, like literally had to eat a couple of their own horses. Right, that's very scary and you're like, butterflies.

Yeah, it's a, you know, there's a little bit of a contradiction there. Yeah. But we're doing serious things here, Tina. It's serious science. So what we're doing is we're trying to set up these motion-activated camera traps, the kind that you could buy at just about any outdoor store. The Smithsonian is having teams leave them out in these grids around the trail for two months this summer and fall to snap photos of whatever walks by. And Maddie says those photos,

will be uploaded to this big public database and processed by AI. It will give us species ID. It will give us individual ID for some of the species. So it's really convenient as well. Yeah, I love how, like, we're blending the old camera with the new, like, these AI programs. Yeah, and what's so cool about these camera traps is they'll probably take photos of animals that Lewis and Clark didn't even see on their expedition. Yeah.

Because one of the shortfalls of observational ecology, Maddie says, you know, that is a person who's out in the field looking for wildlife is that some animals don't want to be seen, right? Makes sense. They're camera shy. So camera traps are much more demure than a big party of people, and they're definitely less smelly than a group of early explorers. True.

What do you think you're going to see? Hmm. What do you think, Maddie? Blacklers. Yeah. For sure. Andre is really hoping to see some wolves. Maddie wants to see some smaller carnivores.

Like hoaxes, maybe madgers. Martin's and Fisher. Yeah. Were all these species ones that Lewis and Clark saw? So this is actually kind of wild, Gina. I didn't know this before going into this reporting. Lewis and Clark described at least 178 plant species during their expedition and more than 120 animals. I say at least because some of their journals were lost.

Many of these species, like the grizzly bear, were new to Western science. And I say Western because obviously Native Americans were living there and knew about them before. But it was new to European ancestors. Yeah, I mean, definitely. They were known those animals. But I never thought of, like, Lewis and Clark as, like, scientists that were taking this data. Yeah. I mean, to be fair, they weren't scientists.

They were both in the military. But, you know, Lewis was given a crash course in botany before the expedition because one of the goals of this whole journey besides finding a passage to the Pacific Ocean and sizing up all the new land that the U.S. bought and the Louisiana purchase was to document the natural resources of the Western U.S. But enough history lessons, I think it's time for us to go off trail. That's how you get eaten. And Gina, like, I want to be honest, I don't know if this was really the best way.

I guess this is the thing when you have the random points and you have to reach it. Have to do a bit of bushwhacking? Yeah. And just think what would be the better way. Yeah, it sounds like a rough hike. Dude, it was so rough. Like, we went straight up a mountain.

Ooh. All right, I'm going to take a break at this rock, take my hiking boots off. Now, imagine doing this in like leather breeches. Yeah, exactly, in a snowstorm. So we scramble up this mountain, like literally scramble. Crolling on hands and knees to get up. Yeah, you're breathing pretty heavy there, Nate.

Dude, I was definitely feeling the elevation, and it wasn't even that high, but I'm just living at sea level, so it was killing me. We have to feel a bit of what they used to feel back then, struggling. We're getting the experience. At least we know where we have more. Yeah. So at this point, Gina, we're close to the GPS point, Andre says, and that means that we just need to find a good place to set up the camera trap, ideally like a game trail. Right, like places you're going to catch wildlife. Exactly.

Got to catch them all, Pokemon, right? Yeah. So a bit further up, we find this, like, flat mid-slope area where Andre notices some overturned rocks. Ooh. I don't be surprised if this is just moved by the bear to look for insects and stuff. Oh, that rock? Yeah. Yeah, something big would have to move it.

They usually do this with even bigger rocks, but just with a fall. I mean, I've seen John. jungle book. I know how this works. Yeah, you've got to find those bugs. So was this a good spot? Yeah, it was as good as we could find. And so cat starts getting out all of her gear. Okay. And then she hangs the camera trap at knee height. That's the standard. The Smithsonian is having everyone use. She does that on a tree. And then to test if it's working, Andre, walks a bit down the trail and, well, listen to the day. Andre, for those who can't see, is crawling around in the brush, like a bear.

I mean, this sounds like real hands-on scientific method, you know? Yes, it is the essence of science. Yeah. So after a bit of adjusting, cool, we did it. We can boogie back. Now you just got to do what? 15 more? 15 more here.

40 more somewhere else. 50 more somewhere else. Yeah, dude. But who's counting? No one's counting. Okay, I have a question. So this camera trap is going to take photos in the summertime. Yep, that's right.

But Lewis and Clark went through this area in the winter. Also right. So won't that mess up the results if they're trying to compare wildlife today versus 220 some years ago? I mean, yes, it definitely will. And that's one of the first questions I asked Bill about the mastermind of this whole project when I talked to him after this little foray. And here's how he put it. Is this cutting edge science? No, this is not cutting edge science.

This is a lot of fun. A lot of fun that has some value to it, you know, informing. people of what's there, what they have, what's still left, what's come back. That's all, that's all of value to the public, even though it's not cutting-edge signs. So what are the major changes he's expecting to see? Well, yeah, I mean, one of the obvious ones is bison, right? There used to be bison all over the Great Plains. Now they only exist in small patches. There's obviously a lot fewer apex predators like wolves and grizzly bears and all that that are on the landscape. rivers have been dammed, the Missouri River, which they travel down, is damned numerous times.

And there's a lot more people on the landscape. But Bill says, big picture. Things are better today than you think. That there's more wildlife out there than you think. And it's distributed in a lot of places that include people. You don't have to have wildlife in one place and people in another. That most of our wildlife live with people. and we get along just fine.

Wow. That's surprising and good to hear. Yeah, and, you know, Bill's hope with this whole thing is that scientists and wildlife managers can then use all of the data they collect. I think we can use the good places to inform the bad places. And he thinks that's particularly true

for Native American communities, which have, you know, a very different view at the Lewis and Clark expedition than a lot of history buffs do. I think they have much better wildlife communities. than a lot of the land around them. And this is an opportunity for them to highlight that these reservations have done a better job

with preserving their wildlife than a lot of us Westerners have done. And I hope that point comes across. Wow, Nate, this was all super fun. I'm glad you survived the hike and took me on this virtual hike. I really enjoyed it. Gina B, thank you so much for joining me

on this expedition. Surewavers, we would like you to follow us. We don't want bears to follow us, but we want you to follow us on the NPR app or wherever you're listening to your podcasts. And I'm actually cool with it if bears want to follow us, but this episode was produced by Burley McCoy, edited by our showrunner Rebecca Ramirez

and fact check by Tyler Jones. The audio engineer was Jimmy Keeley. I'm Nate Rot. And I'm Regina Barber. Thank you for listening to Shortwave on NPR.