For the past three years, Dave and Amy Freeman have been trekking across North America on an 11,700 mile odyssey, during which they’ve traveled via dogsled, canoe and kayak. In the third and final 5,000 mile leg of the journey, Dave and Amy have partnered with Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation to contribute data to two studies as they kayak the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean on south to the Florida Keys.

When they’re not collecting data for ASC, the Freemans operate Wilderness Classroom, a Minnesota-based program designed to educate young students about wild ecosystems through live presentations and internet seminars from remote locales. According to Dave, the program participants tend to respond to the adventure aspect with enthusiasm.

“The teachers use scientific data that we collect like temperature or miles traveled, and they’ll use that for graphing exercises, but I think the students like the animals and the sense of adventure, like the sled dogs. Those types of things are the hooks that really get the kids excited.  It’s a good way to incorporate reading and math and critical thinking and all sorts of basic skills that come along with that,” Freeman said. 

As a traveling rock climber road tripping to America’s greatest climbing destinations, our ropes don’t often take us to areas where relevant data for ASC studies can be collected. Classic crags are developed, crowded, and show endless signs of wear and tear from homo erectus. Environmentally-sensitive areas and species are often off limits to the climbing community, and for good reason. When we hopped on board for the ASC Pika Project, we had expected to spot plenty of the sensitive little mammals in the many mountain ranges on our trip itinerary. My climbing partner and I left our home in West Virginia on June 1st, and, until recently, had been disappointed with our lack of data contribution. It was during a brief backpacking foray into the backcountry of Glacier National Park that we finally found, observed and recorded data to send into the office in Bozeman. 

Particular to our bike, we are piloting a program for ASC that collects data points on roadkill.  The idea behind it being that humans build roads without regard to what natural spaces and animal paths those roads might be cutting through; the results of this division of land has meant millions of animal deaths and millions of dollars in property damage for people and state governments.