Johnsgard, a distinguished ornithologist and naturalist at the University of Nebraska, provides a detailed ecological analysis of the Great Plains landscapes and wildlife observed by Lewis and Clark during their 1804-1806 journey. The article correlates specific journal entries describing encounters with bison herds, grizzly bears, prairie dogs, pronghorn, and hundreds of bird species with modern biological understanding of these organisms and their ecosystems. Johnsgard documents how the captains’ observations provide invaluable baseline data about Great Plains ecology before large-scale Euro-American settlement transformed the landscape. The article discusses the expedition’s encounters with species new to science, including detailed descriptions of the prairie rattlesnake, black-tailed prairie dog, and numerous bird species, and evaluates the accuracy of the captains’ natural history observations against current scientific knowledge.
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