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

August 24, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

In the summer of 2024, a small team of scientists scrambled up a mountainside in western Montana, overturning rocks and testing motion-activated camera traps while orange California tortoiseshell butterflies swarmed around them. They were there to do something that had not been attempted in 220 years: systematically resurvey the wildlife along the route Meriwether Lewis and William Clark took across the American West. The idea came from Bill McShay, a wildlife ecologist at the Smithsonian’s Conservation Biology Institute, who was asked to find a scientific way to commemorate the 250th birthday of the United States. He was stumped until a thought surfaced: Lewis and Clark’s expedition was the first systematic natural history survey of the Western U.S., documenting at least 178 plant species and more than 120 animals, many of them new to Western science. So McShay proposed doing it again, but this time with a twist—recruiting ordinary people living along the trail to help collect the data.

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What you'll learn

1 (00:31) **The Challenge: How to Celebrate 250 Years Scientifically** - NPR host Regina Barber and Nate Rott introduce the episode's central question: how to commemorate the U.S. semiquincentennial with a science project. Wildlife ecologist Bill McShay of the Smithsonian's Conservation Biology Institute was stumped until a historical idea clicked.
2 (01:56) **The Historic Precedent: Lewis and Clark's Scientific Mission** - Bill describes the Lewis and Clark expedition as the first systematic natural history survey of the Western U.S., a "black land of desolation" to the average American of 1800, but actually full of life.
3 (03:05) **The Modern Resurvey: Citizen Science on the Trail** - The Smithsonian is recruiting regular people living along the Lewis and Clark Trail to participate in the resurvey, aiming to make the public aware of local wildlife changes.
4 (04:38) **Setting the Scene: Western Montana** - Nate Rott takes listeners to a dirt road outside Lolo, Montana, near the Idaho border, with a team from the University of Montana.
5 (05:58) **The Method: Camera Traps and GPS Grids** - The team navigates to a specific GPS point within a 50-mile buffer of the original Lewis and Clark Trail, which stretches from Pittsburgh to the Pacific Northwest.
6 (07:38) **Why Camera Traps Beat Old-School Observation** - Nate explains that camera traps overcome a key limitation of Lewis and Clark's observational ecology: many animals avoid humans.
7 (08:31) **Lewis and Clark as Accidental Scientists** - Nate reveals that Lewis and Clark described at least 178 plant species and 120 animals, many new to Western science (though known to Native Americans).

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Show Notes

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.

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