Visualizing the Region’s Wildlife Through Data

Whitney Maxfield BA ’25 spent her summer scavenging for the DNA of an almost-forgotten creature. The Franklin bumble bee, local to Oregon and California, was last seen alive in 2006, when Maxfield was just 3 years old. The small, short-tongued insect found itself unable to withstand environmental stressors, and is now considered critically endangered––but there is good reason to search for clues about its past life. The bee tells a bigger story about ecological shifts in the Pacific Northwest, informing our understanding of how the region has changed in the recent past and what that might mean for our future.

Maxfield, alongside Sylvia Barclay BA ’25, was a summer intern with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS). The new graduates were tasked with building models that illustrated species distribution and habitat suitability for bumble bees in the region (including, but not limited to the Franklin), using the skills developed in Lewis & Clark’s Applied Data Science Practicum. Maxfield was introduced to USFWS through her work in the practicum, which extends from funding granted by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

The two-credit practicum was designed to introduce students to real-world issues with potential data science solutions, enabling them to work with large-scale data sets from local stakeholders. USFWS and the Multnomah County Health Department (MCHD) were the course’s first collaborators, each providing students with raw information that could be leveraged to generate valuable insights for their operations.

In partnership with USFWS, students evaluated the endangerment of species around the region, conducting what are known as “species status assessments.” After downloading occurrence records for various species, coding in the programming language R, and learning how to navigate the platform GitHub, students were able to plot on maps where vulnerable species are found and offer predictions for future distributions.

“I wanted to take students who had these natural skills but might not identify as data scientists and throw them into a real-world problem, interacting with stakeholders and seeing what they could do,” says Professor of Biology Greta Binford, who leads L&C’s data science work with the NSF grant. “And the result was that students could do so much.”

Dianara Sagastizado BA ’27 was inspired to enroll in the practicum after taking Binford’s “Data in the Wild” Numbers section. Each group focused on a different species under consideration for endangered classification in the Pacific Northwest. Sagastizado’s group chose the cascade torrent salamander, a dark-colored, spotted amphibian that is usually identified in Washington state. Her group found that the species’ narrow acclimatization would make it difficult to weather the effects of climate change, thus leaving it vulnerable to endangerment.

“I now look at data through the lens of all these decisions we make––everything from which foods we should eat to the steps we can take to protect endangered species,” says Sagastizado. “In the course, we had a direct connection to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. There’s so much red tape in the government, but people were so hopeful. That professional optimism was infectious.”

Alan Yanahan, a conservation biologist for USFWS’s Pacific Region, worked with students in both the practicum and internship. “Our partnership with Lewis & Clark comes at a time of growing recognition within USFWS about the importance of bumble bees and other pollinators for healthy, functioning ecosystems,” says Yanahan.

After her summer internship with USFWS, Maxfield accepted a two-month position with HawkWatch International. From morning to evening, she sits on the rim of the Grand Canyon, counting and identifying migrating raptors––hawks, eagles, falcons, turkey vultures, and other birds of prey. In a single season, her team will count anywhere from 4,000 to 6,000 birds. The organization’s other sites produce counts in the hundreds of thousands, collecting data that will help give shape to conservation efforts.

Maxfield plans to pursue a master’s degree in spatial ecology, where she will examine how species’ patterns of movement affect ecological processes like animal interactions and habitat preferences. “Before the practicum, I didn’t know how useful something like data science would be for conservation,” she says. “But we got to go out and see how the data we were gathering could be used to get a better understanding of species’ distribution. To see it turned into something that might make a difference––it’s cool.”

Data Science