b': MUSEUM OF IDAHO WAY OUT WEST ENTERS A NEW ERA ENVIRONMENTAL HOW DO YOU GO ABOUTtelling a story about your backyard that spans 15,000 years? MONITORING IS A TEAM We know the environmental Thats the challenge the Museum of Idaho has taken on with its permanent Way Out West exhibit regulations. There are 100 scheduled to open Jan. 23, 2021. EFFORT AT INL changes annually, and its our We have this incredible collection of artifacts, buttribes rich culture, customs and ingenuity, havent had a place to show them, said Jeff Carr,displaying tools, beadwork and even a dress INL UNDERSTANDS THATIdahoans have questions about the environmental effects of its activitiesjob to stay up on them. the museums public relations director. The exhibitmade from sagebrush bark.not only on the land it occupies but far beyond it. Thats why the lab strives for transparency by caps a capital campaign that added 19,000 squareTo protect and preservecollecting more than 2,000 samples annually from monitoring stations spread over 9,000 square miles.Scott Lee, INL Monitoring andfeet of new space to the museum. Cultural Resources Services managerThe National Historic Preservation Act of 1966Experts take air, water, soil, milk and external radiation samples, and send them to independent Through artifacts, art and interactive media,made federal agencies responsible for managinglaboratories for analysis. On top of that, the Idaho Department of Environmental Qualitys (DEQ) INL Way Out West highlights southern Idaho fromarchaeological resources and historic buildingsOversight Program performs independent verification of the labs environmental monitoring and does the days of Lake Terreton, when the region wason federal lands. As DOEs contractor, INL isits own evaluations. DEQs annual reports are publicly available in print and online.lush and the earliest human inhabitants huntedobligated to protect and preserve. So any time mammoths and giant bison, to the present day.INL can participate in educating the public, theThe ESER Program conducts midwinter raptor Collaborators include the Shoshone-Bannocklab is fulfilling an important part of the historiccounts, breeding bird surveys, raven nest Tribes, INL and a host of other historical andpreservation mission. This is why INL is ansurveys and bat population surveys. Many cultural preservation societies around the region.enthusiastic partner in Way Out West, vegetation plots are surveyed annually, and Henrikson said.others are visited every few years. Telemetry A million stories studies involving radio collars have been done The 890 square miles bounded by the INL Site isActual arrowheads and projectile points fromon elk, pygmy rabbits, coyotes and sage grouse.at the heart of an area rich with archaeologicalDOEs collection cant be used in the exhibitand historical knowledge. With stones and bones,they serve as data points in a scientific endeavorWhile sage-grouse populations in the American cabins and kilns, even the wreckage of a B-24and are too valuable as pieces of the history andWest have declined by more than half in the bomber that crashed on a training run duringfootprint of the Shoshone and Bannock peoplepast 100 years due to habitat loss, the INL Site World War II, the land holds information fromto be put at risk. So INL went to considerableis still a place the birds call home. Though 15,000 years of human occupation and activity. expense to have exact replicas cast. The labfires periodically burn across parts of the Site, also contributed photos and old implementsand sagebrush takes decades to recover, the Archaeologists have a million stories, and itsand bottles that, having been removed fromINL Site still holds large tracts of undisturbed up to the museum staff to pick which ones theytheir archaeological context, cant be part of theA history of respect for the land sagebrush habitat.want to tell, said Dr. L. Suzann Henrikson of INLscollection but still shed light on how people lived. Environmental monitoring at INL can trace itsTop: Saddle Mountain near Howe, Idaho. Cultural Resources Management Office. roots back to 1950, when the Atomic EnergyDOE has funded sage-grouse monitoring at Mammoth & giant slothCommission (AEC) was getting ready to buildINL since 1995. Radio collars provide data onBottom: DOE has funded sage-grouse research Early humans, tribal ancestorsWay Out West is anchored in the Carr Atrium its first experimental reactors. That year, AEChabitat use, nesting behavior and mortality,at INL since 1995. Sage-grouse populations have set aside 100 long-term plots for studying thewhile biologists perform lek surveys everyshrunk dramatically in western North America, At the end of the ice age, southern Idaho wasby Bia-Dekape (Bee-aww-Dik-cup, meaning spring to get rough and relative populationbut INL is one place the birds call home. home to some of North Americas earliest humanbig food in the Shoshone language), a life-size potential effects on native vegetation. Those plotscounts. Leks are places where males gather inhabitants. They hunted huge mammals, and14-foot mammoth first unveiled for thecontinue to be surveyed every five to seven years.during the mating season to strut and display.the evidence of those huntsprojectile pointsColumbian Mammoth exhibit in 2003. For moreIn 1975, the INL Site was designated a National scattered across the eastern Snake River Plain than a decade, Bia-Dekape has been stashedEnvironmental Research Park. It maintains severalIn 2014, DOE-Idaho entered into a Candidate indicate these people were not tethered to anybehind a curtain as other exhibits have comeregionally and nationally important long-termConservation Agreement with the U.S. Fishone place.and gone. Now, for maximum effect and context,ecological datasets, including one of the largestand Wildlife Service (USFWS) to establish the beast has been paired with a panoramicdatasets on sagebrush steppe vegetationa sage grouse conservation area. ToWhat makes the story particularly compelling isdecorative metal enclosure designed by localanywhere.guard against population declines, it Top: A dress made of sagebrush bark onthat they were most likely ancestors of the bandsShoshone-Bannock tribal artist, Bailey Dann, anincludes declining population and display. This is traditional garb of the Shoshoneof Shoshone and Bannock people who noweducator and writer. Safe habitat for animals habitat triggers that would initiateand Bannock people who have inhabitedconstitute the Shoshone-Bannockan automatic response by both the southern Idaho for centuries.Tribes. The tribes have theirAlso dominating the room is a cast of a HarlansVeolia, the company that manages theUSFWS and DOE-Idaho.legends and stories, productsGround Sloth, a giant animal that lived in easternEnvironmental Surveillance, Education and Bottom: Dr. L. Suzann Henrikson holds theof an oral tradition thatIdaho during the ice age (fossil skeletons haveResearch (ESER) Program for DOE, has a teamThe INL Site also is a proven pathway forreplica of a Clovis point. These large tools stretches back centuries.been found near American Falls and Swanthat includes health physicists, environmentaltwo bat species as they migrate southwardare commonly found with mammoth kills. The exhibit givesValley). The cast was given to the museum by ascientists, wildlife biologists, plant ecologists,in the late summer and early fall. Every special focusprivate donor but loaned for several years to thegeographic information system specialists andother year, the ESER Program conducts a to theIdaho Museum of Natural History in Pocatello.support staff. ESERs role is to provide expertisecount of hibernating bats in select INL SiteNow that it has a permanent display space, it hasand advice to the DOE Idaho Operations Officecaves and routinely monitors bat populations come home. and assess the impacts of activities and naturalusing acoustical monitors set up at cave mouths phenomena, such as wildland fires, at the INL Site.that switch on at dusk and turn off at dawn. 22|Idaho National Laboratory|your.inl.gov your.inl.gov|Idaho National Laboratory|23'