In collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution, BYU-Idaho will celebrate the Lewis and Clark expedition and 250 years of independence in America by setting up cameras around the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail to conduct research.
The Smithsonian, the world's largest museum organization, reached out to around 50 universities across the United States, including BYU-Idaho. The goal of the nationwide project is to do research surrounding the many types of wildlife on the Lewis and Clark trail and to collect data on how it has changed and evolved since Lewis and Clark first traveled on it.
The Lewis and Clark trail spans just shy of 5,000 miles, but BYU-Idaho will oversee a section of just a few miles near Salmon and Leadore, Idaho.
While cities have been built and developed on other sections of the trail outside of Idaho, BYU-Idaho's section offers exciting research opportunities.
"The area we have staked out is still pretty wild," says Mikayla Khilobok, president of the Fisheries, Range and Wildlife Society on campus. "It's a rural area. No one really lives out there, so we have a higher likelihood of finding a lot of those animals that Lewis and Clark would have actually seen. We have a pretty cool spot."
The university will deploy 10 motion-sensing cameras on its section of the trail to gather photos of any activity starting in June. BYU-Idaho's group will be composed primarily of volunteers from the fisheries, range and wildlife major, but any students are welcome to help comb through the thousands of photos that will be taken. They will have the chance to see animals like bears and pronghorns.
"Lewis and Clark were the first to find pronghorn in the western United States," Khilobok said. "If we find something like a pronghorn or another species that was special like that that they first encountered, then that would be amazing for this research project. That's really what we're hoping to find."
The project will continue through October. All data will then be collected and sorted out to be presented and featured in the Smithsonian in 2027. Khilobok says it's a historic project.
"Something of this magnitude has not been done," Khilobok said. "This has such an impact on history. Maybe we won’t see the same animals they saw or maybe we will. 250 years’ worth of data is pretty wild."
Anyone wishing to be involved in the research can contact Mikayla Khilobok at mcb24006@byui.edu, or Jericho Whiting at whitingj@byui.edu.