An endangered leatherback sea turtle was released back into the wild after being rescued by animal lovers.
Footage shows the massive creature slowly inching its way toward the water as well-wishers watch from the shore on Oct. 12.
The images were shared online by the International Fund for Animal Welfare, (IFAW) which said: “This week, an endangered leatherback sea turtle was discovered stranded alive in Wellfleet, Massachusetts — an area where IFAW’s Marine Mammal Rescue & Research team often responds to stranded marine mammals.
“The local response organization for stranded sea turtles in the area, Mass Audubon Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, quickly jumped in to rescue him and called for support from IFAW and New England Aquarium (NEAQ).”
The organization said leatherback sea turtles are the largest turtles in the world, with adults ranging from 550 to 1,500 pounds. They are the only species of sea turtle that lack scales and a hard shell.
This particular specimen was estimated to “be close to 600 pounds — which meant the team needed all hands on deck to transport the animal off the beach.”
The 600-pound rescued leatherback turtle returns to the Atlantic Ocean. (IFAW/Zenger)
In order to cope with its size, rescuers used a stretcher that usually carries dolphins, as well as a “dolphin cart.” The reptile was placed on the stretcher and transported to a beach in Provincetown, where it could be released safely.
Before releasing it into the Atlantic Ocean, the New England Aquarium gave it a full health checkup and tied it with tracking devices, so it could monitor its movements in the wild.
“Soon, the turtle was brought to the water’s edge, where he slowly but surely made his way back to safer, deeper waters.
“Every individual leatherback sea turtle is vital to the survival of this endangered species, and we were proud to be part of such an important rescue alongside two incredible organizations,” the aquarium said.
The leatherback turtle is listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, but many subpopulations are critically endangered. (IFAW/Zenger)
Leatherback sea turtles are listed as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Endangered Species. Despite not having many natural predators once they reach adult size, the main threats to its survival include human-related activities. Some turtles are caught for their meat.
Their nests are also targeted by humans in Southeast Asia. Many end up stranded in Florida, where they are often hit by boat propellors, causing them to wash up on shore.
Leatherback turtles are also victims of bycatch, a species caught unintentionally by fisheries. In addition, light pollution can impede their ability to ensure the survival of turtle hatchlings. The newborns are attracted to light and often head toward it instead of remaining on the beach and going into the sea.
Federal U.S. data that showed an increase in commercial crude oil inventories was overshadowed by broader market issues surrounding energy inflation, analysts told Zenger.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration publishes weekly data on commercial storage levels of crude oil, gasoline and other refined petroleum products. Increases are usually indicative of lackluster demand, while the opposite holds for drains.
The administration reported Thursday, a day later than usual because of a federal holiday on Monday, that commercial crude oil inventories increased by 6.1 million barrels from the previous week.
That would normally send the price of oil lower, but a perfect storm of factors suggests the rally is continuing on momentum alone.
Giovanni Staunovo, a commodities analyst at Swiss investment bank UBS, said the weekly report was bearish.
“The support for crude prices has come from the IEA raising their demand estimates,” he said, referencing the International Energy Agency.
It was a trifecta week, with the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the Paris-based International Energy Agency and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries all issuing their monthly market reports for October.
In Moscow, it was a pantheon of energy figures as the Kremlin hosted its annual energy conference.
The International Energy Agency in its report Thursday said the ongoing rally in natural gas prices is creating tailwinds for other commodities. The industry looks to save costs by turning to other fuels, thereby transferring demand from gas to alternative products.
“Record coal and gas prices, as well as rolling blackouts, are prompting the power sector and energy-intensive industries to turn to oil to keep the lights on and operations humming,” the report read.
The Biden administration has been pressuring oil producers to do more to calm the market. (White House)
The ongoing rally is sparking concerns that energy inflation will undermine global economic health.
The White House has reached out to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to help soothe the market — but to no avail. White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said on Wednesday she was “not aware” if there’s been any outreach to domestic oil and gas companies about production.
Federal data show a small weekly increase in domestic crude oil production. But to date, the domestic sector is producing less than it did last year, when demand destruction during the height of the pandemic hammered the industry.
Through the first full week of October, domestic crude oil production is down 6.2 percent compared with last year. On the refining side, Phil Flynn, a senior energy analyst at The PRICE Futures Group in Chicago, said supply-chain issues may help explain some of the build in domestic crude oil inventories.
“It was a shocking build in crude oil inventories, but apparently the build wasn’t because demand was weak,” he said, “it was because of issues on the refining side.”
Federal data show domestic crude oil inventories near the low-end of the historic average, a problematic issue, given the flip from natural gas to oil. (Graph courtesy of the U.S. Energy Information Administration)
Edward Moya, a senior market analyst at broker OANDA, echoed that concern, telling Zenger some refiners are down because of regular maintenance.
Crude oil prices are up approximately 3.3 percent so far this week, as of early Friday.
A federal market report issued earlier this week estimated a 37 percent chance that West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark for the price of oil, would post a fourth quarter average higher than $80 per barrel, though it was already above $82 in early Friday trading.
The last time U.S. crude oil prices were this high and OANDA’s Moya said the bulls have plenty of room to run was late October 2014.
“This weekly EIA crude oil inventory report should not change the very bullish short-term outlook for crude prices,” he said.
Four giant rodents called capybaras have been born in a zoo in Switzerland.
The birth took place Sept. 27 at the Zurich Zoo to mother Sissi and father Mo, who was also born in the zoo. Sissi originally comes from the Hellabrunn Zoo in Munich, Germany.
The zoo does not yet know the gender of the new babies. “It is determined around three months of age, when the pups are examined and chipped for the first time.
“Even in adulthood, capybara females and males are quite difficult to distinguish from one another because they look very similar and their sexual organs are located inside the body.”
Capybaras are the largest of rodents, weighing between 77 and 145 pounds, with females being slightly larger than the males. The animals tend to live in groups of around 10 adults of both sexes. They congregate with larger groups around water resources during the dry season.
The four capybaras were born in the Zurich Zoo in late September. (Zoo Zurich, Enzo Franchini/Zenger)
“As they flee the nest, the young capybaras are already nimble around the facility and follow their parents. The mother provides the young animals with milk for about three to four months. The baby capybaras also start eating grass very quickly, in addition to drinking milk,” the zoo said.
While they tend to be grazers, they will consume bark and fruit.
“Together with aquatic plants, grasses form the main food of the largest and heaviest rodent living today. It is no coincidence that they look like oversized guinea pigs; they belong in the same family as house guinea pigs.”
The species are also skilled swimmers.
Capybaras are widespread in South America, found from Venezuela to the Argentine pampas and west of the Andes. “They have little webbed toes and, like the crocodile, the capybara’s nose, eyes and ears are lined up,” said the zoo. “The rodents can submerge themselves almost completely in the water and still smell, see and hear everything.”
The four capybaras with their mother Sissi. It will be three months before the zoo can determine their gender. (Zoo Zurich, Enzo Franchini/Zenger)
The Zurich Zoo plans to build a new home for the capybaras in the Pantanal aviary. By 2025, it is expected “zoo guests will ascend lofty heights and dive underwater” to experience all dimensions of the South American wetland.”
Capybaras are highly social and usually live in groups that can reach up to 100 members although most tend to stick to collectives between 10 and 20 members.
The rodent species is not considered to be threatened, but it is often hunted in South America for its meat and hide.
From wildfires to a 30-mile-long oil spill, California is facing two environmental crises this month affecting ecosystems, tourism and local economies.
Most recently, the Alisal Fire near Santa Barbara has burned more than 13,000 acres since Oct. 11. Dry conditions and strong winds have fueled the fire, the Los Padres National Forest service said. The origin of the fire has not been determined.
A pipeline leak off the coast of Huntington Beach reported on Oct. 2 spilled an estimated 126,000 gallons of oil into the Pacific Ocean. Investigators said the spill may have been occurring for some length of time. An investigation is under way.
“In the last decade, we’ve seen a much higher frequency of megafires with flames at over 100 feet tall,” said Jessica Morse, deputy secretary for forest and wildland resilience at the California Natural Resources Agency.
Flames chew through chaparral brush at the Alisal Fire on Oct. 13 near Goleta, California. (David McNew/Getty Images)
Megafires are wildfires that burn more than 100,000 acres, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
“Climate change creates compounding, cyclical crises that feed into one another,” said Morse.
Estimates of the oil spill range from 29,400 gallons to 126,000 gallons. The precise amount is still unknown, though cleanup efforts led to city and state beaches in Huntington Beach being reopened on Oct. 11.
Workers in protective suits clean oil in the Talbert Marsh wetlands after a 126,000-gallon oil spill from an offshore oil platform on Oct. 4 in Huntington Beach, California. The spill forced the closure of the popular Great Pacific Airshow with authorities closing beaches in the vicinity. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
With access denied for more than a week, the economic impact was felt by vendors along the beach.
Though California does not have a statewide system for tracking the costs of wildfires, CalMatters estimated a combined $143.3 million in lost revenue for El Dorado County, which was affected by fires in the Lake Tahoe region. In 2018, wildfires cost the state a total of $148.5 billion, 0.7% of the United States’ annual GDP.
“Having people avoid an area that relies on tourism because of an oil spill can be very damaging to its economy,” said Ruth Sofield, an environmental toxicology and chemistry professor at Western Washington University.
She cited Louisiana, where environmental crises have negatively affected the vital shellfish industry, as an example of their potentially far-reaching impact.
The massive BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 affected Louisiana as well.
“The industry was impacted quite a bit in part because people were afraid to eat shellfish from Louisiana. This is people’s livelihood, and they didn’t choose to have oil spilled on resources,” Sofield said.
In an aerial view, shorebirds feed amid oil contaminating Huntington State Beach after a 126,000-gallon oil spill from an offshore oil platform on Oct. 4 in Huntington Beach, California. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
“In particular, oyster fisheries in the Gulf region are threatened by environmental change brought on by large sediment and freshwater diversions, which lead to prolonged periods of low salinity and sedimentation; hurricane events, which lead to harmful levels of saltwater intrusion; and oil spills, which lead to hypoxic conditions. These events represent environmental hazards that pose risks to people and nature,” states a 2019 study published in the journal Ecology and Society.
Meanwhile, California has the burden of dealing with wildfires and oil spills essentially at the same time.
“More extreme climate conditions are exacerbating unhealthy ecology, making them more fire-prone. A quarter of California residents are living in a high-fire risk zone,” Morse said.
Though wildfires have the positive effect of eliminating underbrush in forests and adding topsoil, she said, the “intensity and severity of megafires turn forests to shrub areas and shrub areas to invasive grasslands.”
Drought brought on by warming temperatures and water loss has exacerbated the problems, leading to tree die-offs, which act as “dead-standing fuel,” Morse said.
In an aerial view, low water levels are visible at Lake Oroville on July 22 in Oroville, California. As the extreme drought emergency continues in California, Lake Oroville’s water levels are dropping. State water officials took the hydroelectric Edward Hyatt Power Plant offline due to low water levels. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
The California Natural Resources Agency, working with other state agencies, is following what Morse described as a three-pronged “resilience model” for controlling wildfires: intervention to restore natural fire regimes; strategic fuel breaks to reduce spread; and ignition-resistant materials for homes.
She cited the success of such strategies in helping battle this season’s wildfires.
“Creating a network of fuel breaks, like thinning out roadside brush, considerably drops flame height and lowers their heat signature. It makes them much easier and safer to fight,” Morse said.
For oil spills, the precise effects of climate change are more obscure but no less concerning, officials say.
“Climate change is intricately involved in environmental toxicology,” Morse said. “If you’re changing [a lifeform’s] environment, even before adding a pollutant, then you’re changing how they interact with the environment.”
She cited warming temperatures affecting animals’ metabolism, thus changing how their bodies interact with chemical pollutants.
“If you add onto [metabolism] an exposure to something like oil, once they get into the organism, they metabolize or break them down more quickly. In some cases that’s good because you’re getting rid of the [toxic chemicals]. But the downside is, along the way, some of those chemicals become more toxic. And so there’s this increase in the toxic components inside of an organism that can happen through the course of metabolism,” said Sofield.
She also cited possible changes in water pH [acidity] from increased UV radiation.
One study from 2017 published by the National Center for Biotechnology Information on the “Impact of climate change and seasonal trends on the fate of Arctic oil spills” states: “We found differences in ‘typical’ outcome of a spill in a warmer future compared to the present, mainly due to a longer season of open water. We have demonstrated that ice cover is extremely important for predicting the fate of an Arctic oil spill, and find that oil spills in a warming climate will in some cases result in greater areal coverage and shoreline exposure.”
A former Florida doctor, his wife and son have been arrested for running a “pill mill” from their clinic where they allegedly double-billed patients for cash and insurance and often did not carry out examinations.
Dr. William Wilson, 68, and his wife, Beverly Wilson, 66, were arrested at their home in Norfolk, Virginia, and their son, James Wilson, 48, was arrested in Pensacola, Florida, on Oct. 12. They face multiple charges relating to the illegal operation at the Wilson Family Medical Center in Pensacola.
Dr. William Wilson, 68. (FDLE/Zenger)
The investigation into the trio started in 2019 following complaints that the Wilson Family Medical Center was “operating as an unlicensed pain management clinic for financial gain and negligently prescribing dangerous narcotic combinations,” the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said.
The first of two raids was carried out at the clinic on 11th September 2019 when “significant evidence” was seized, authorities said.
At the time, Dr. Wilson handed over his Drug Enforcement Agency registration that had permitted him to prescribe controlled substances to patients.
As the investigation developed, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said the “analysis included file reviews by a certified expert physician with an expertise in interventional pain management, who found that all of the charts he reviewed revealed patients were prescribed controlled substances without a legitimate medical purpose.”
Investigators also discovered that the clinic double-billed customers for cash and insurance and that patients “routinely received controlled substance prescriptions” without examination or clinical notes, and usually without even seeing Dr. Wilson.
“Agents provided the expert physician the chart of an 18-year-old male who visited the clinic at least 10 times, receiving controlled substances each visit,” the department said. “There were no notes in his chart indicating the reason for the prescriptions. On April 26, 2018, he received a prescription for oxycodone and was found dead on April 27. The Medical Examiner determined the cause of death as oxycodone toxicity.”
The investigation found that the Wilson Family Medical Center fraudulently billed Blue Cross Blue Shield for a total of $1.86 million and received $500,000.
“As in all professions, the majority of physicians do the right thing,” said Chris Williams, the department’s Pensacola Special Agent in Charge. “From time to time, a physician does not live out the Hippocratic Oath and FDLE appreciates the help of our law enforcement partners and members of our community in working together to stop them from hurting our citizens and holding them accountable.”
The Wilsons were each charged with conspiracy to traffic in oxycodone, unlawful use of a two-way communications device, culpable negligence inflicting actual injury and scheme to defraud.
James Wilson was booked into Florida’s Escambia County Jail on a $136,000 bond, authorities say, while William and Beverly Wilson are being held pending extradition at the Norfolk City Jail in Virginia. (It was not disclosed when the couple moved there.)
The investigation is ongoing and more charges could be filed.
American actor, author, director and radio personality Geoffrey Giuliano, who was stranded in India last year during the pandemic, has hit it big since his role in Netflix’s top original series of all time, “Squid Game.”
Giuliano, 68, was stranded in Jaipur, Rajasthan, with his son, Eden, then 12, last March when the borders were closed due to the COVID-19 outbreak, and they couldn’t return to their home in Thailand.
As their stay dragged on, Giuliano ran out of money, and he said they were forced to survive on “monkey nuts and bananas.” They had no fresh clothes for six months and begged for beds in yoga ashrams.
Giuliano, the author of more than two dozen books — many of them about The Beatles — is also a singer-songwriter, and he has appeared in more than two dozen films.
He and his son returned to Thailand in January, where one of the first things they did was to take a hot bath.
“Squid Game” director Hwang Dong-hyuk recognized Giuliano from minor roles and selected him for the role of an eccentric gay billionaire named “VIP 4” in the hit show.
Giuliano said he has now been bombarded with offers for roles since the release of “Squid Game” on Sept. 17.
American actor Geoffrey Giuliano credits his role as VIP 4 in “Squid Game” with giving his career a shot in the arm. (ViralPress/Zenger)
“A year ago I really thought we would starve to death,” Giuliano said last week. “I had to fight every day just to get food for my son and me to survive. … It was the darkest time of my life, and I was thinking it was the end for both of us.
“When I was asked to work on ‘Squid Game,’ I wasn’t expecting it to be such a hit. My life has flipped upside down and I’ve finally found success my son can be proud of.”
Giuliano said he traveled to India on a spiritual pilgrimage after becoming disillusioned with life. He took his son, who is also starting out as an actor, hoping the experience would help him.
In “Squid Game” 450 people who are mired in debt, are desperate to take an opportunity to turn their lives around and they accept an invitation to take part in a deadly competition.
Geoffrey Giuliano and his son, Eden. (ViralPress/Zenger)
Giuliano himself had been struggling with financial issues in Pattaya, Thailand, where he and his son live. But his fortunes forever changed after the “Squid Game” director told him he “was the only foreigner in the world” he wanted for the role of VIP 4.
Giuliano appears in episode 9, “One Lucky Day.”
Hwang had seen Giuliano in a Korean zombie movie and was attracted by his portrayal of an American villain.
In “Squid Game,” Giuliano wears a panther mask as a VIP, betting on the players taking part in a game.
“Although I’ve had good solid parts in 28 movies, over the last 15 years nothing really moved the needle until ‘Squid Game,’ said Giuliano.
“Astonishingly, I have three films on Netflix: ‘Kate’, ‘Peninsula Train to Busan’ and of course the biggest so far, ‘Squid Game.’
“It’s just been my son and I all these years and because of Netflix’s faith in me, I have turned his life around for which I’m very grateful. In this difficult age of COVID, this is a truly happy ending.”
A Newfoundland couple took the unusual step of pushing their two-story house into the Bay of Islands to move it about six-tenths of a mile to their new property on Oct. 11.
The trip for the finished house along the north shore of the bay on Thanksgiving Day in Canada took about eight hours and the effort of half a dozen boats.
House owner Daniele Penney who organized the move with her boyfriend, Kirk Lovell, said it also took a lot of nerves and “nailbiting.”
As she watched the operation from dry land in the tiny rural community of McIvers on the west coast of Newfoundland, at one point the house started to slip into the water and the boat pushing it broke down. But then other boats rushed to join in and managed to stabilize it.
Aerial footage shows the house is being towed and pushed across the water toward the place where it is finally meant to be located, with two huge mechanical diggers waiting at the water’s edge to help to pull it ashore.
The couple’s new home faced quite a journey. (Keith Goodyear/Zenger)
Once it arrives, it is pulled by the diggers up the slope on a trailer and slowly edged into place, as another video shows.
Another video shows the home, with a view over the bay, as it is being carefully pulled and placed into its final position.
Penney said the massive operation took place because she had always admired the two-story house from its original plot of land, and she had been shocked to learn that the owner was planning to redevelop the plot and tear down the house.
She and her boyfriend then decided to try and move it to their own plot of land along the water, but it was not possible to move it over land because of all the obstacles, including high-voltage power lines.
Daniele Penney and her boyfriend Kirk Lovell got their dream home by moving it along the north shore of the Bay of Islands in Newfoundland, Canada, on Oct. 11. (Keith Goodyear/Zenger)
They were inspired to try the water effort that involved strapping barrels to the bottom of the house. They knew that in the past, when the road network was less sophisticated, houses had often been moved by floating them across the water.
The trailer that was used to pull the house ashore was already fitted to the bottom of the house when it went into the water, and it was held up by tires.
Some of the fixtures and fittings of the house ended up filled with water as a result of the move, but the couple is hoping that it will soon dry out, helped by holes dug in the bottom for quick drainage.
They couple is living in a mobile home while they wait for their new home to be habitable.
The couple said that it would probably have been cheaper to build a new house, but it was great to be part of re-creating a bit of history, and it was a memory they would always treasure.
A female chimpanzee has adopted her ill sister’s newborn infant at a zoo in Switzerland.
Kitoko the chimpanzee is looking after her own baby at the Basel Zoo — and adopted her sister Fifi’s daughter, too.
The zoo said the birth of Fifi’s daughter on June 26 had gone well, but the mother had “handed her baby over to other members of the group unusually early.”
Despite continuing to suckle her newborn, after about two weeks, “Fifi became weak and developed a limp in her hind legs. Although the zoo vet gave Fifi intensive care, she showed no signs of improvement. The vet could not find any cause for Fifi’s symptoms.
“At the end of July, the zookeepers noticed Kitoko, Fifi’s sister, was caring for the newborn the majority of the time and had even begun to suckle it. A few days later, Kitoko gave birth to her own baby boy, who she initially appeared to ignore.
“However, father Kume and other members of the group insisted Kitoko should look after the young male. Experienced mother Kitoko has been taking care of the two little ones ever since. Both are doing well and developing normally. The young female is called Sangala and Kitoko’s son is named Sabaki.”
Female chimpanzee Kitoko takes care of two babies at the Basel Zoo in Switzerland. (Zoo Basel/Zenger)
The zoo said it working with veterinarians, as well as gynecologists and cardiologists who work in human medicine, to discover what is wrong with Fifi.
It is not uncommon for a chimpanzee to adopt another’s baby, which can occur in nature, according to the zoo. “Chimpanzees will sometimes also adopt babies in the wild. Baby chimpanzees are dependent on their mothers for the first six years of their lives.
“If the mother dies prematurely, the young animal’s chances of survival in the wild falls dramatically. If other members of the group adopt the orphaned little one, their chances of survival remain high.”
The chimp cousins are being cared for by Kitoko, since her sister fell ill and could not mother her newborn. Zoo Basel/Zenger)
The zoo also said orphans adopted in the wild are often older than Fifi’s son. “There are only two known instances in the wild of young aged under two being adopted.”
The fact that Sangala was adopted by Kitoko “is most likely thanks to the circumstances in the zoo. In the wild, the dying mother would have distanced herself from the group and taken her little one with her.
Highly social animals, chimpanzees are our closest cousins; we share about 98 percent of our genes. In the forests of Central Africa, they spend most of their days in the treetops.
Firefighters brought in a tanker jet to drop a fire-retardant chemical load onto a wildfire raging within a Montana national park.
“A VLAT [very large air tanker] that was timing out for the season helped us out by dropping one of its last loads over the Crown Mountain Fire,” according to a report on the blaze that accompanied footage of the chemical drop posted by the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest.
Such tankers are often retired airliners like the DC-10 or C-130 cargo planes that have been and converted to carry and dispense large loads of retardant. The type of jet involved in the Montana drop was not identified by authorities.
The Montana fire is on the 8,400-feet-high Crown Mountain within the park. The footage shows a jet flying over the burning mountain before dropping its load over the blaze.
The fire was 16 miles west of the city of Augusta and has burned through almost 1,400 acres, according to local officials citing the latest information on Wednesday. Its cause is still unknown.
A tanker jet dropped fire-retardant chemical on the Crown Mountain Fire in Montana’s Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest. (Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest/Zenger)
“Local resources are engaged with full suppression actions maintaining the safety of fire personnel and the public as the number one priority,” the park said.
Battling the blaze — which was discovered Oct. 4 — has been complicated by a variety of factors, officials said.
“During the initial three days, gusty winds, unseasonably high temperatures, and dry conditions resulted in active fire behavior and dangerous firefighting conditions for direct attack on the fire. These circumstances forced air and ground crews to disengage from the fire on Oct. 5 and Oct. 6.”
Authorities noted the fire is burning within portions of the footprint of the 1988 Canyon Creek Fire and that steps are being taken to protect buildings and residents in the area.
“Fire personnel installed point protection on threatened ranches adjacent to the Forest boundary in Smith Creek as well as in the Benchmark corridor to include Double Falls recreational cabins and structures in the Ford Creek area. Windy conditions have again prevailed from Oct. 8 through present day.
“The fire is burning in steep, rugged terrain and fueled by regenerated Lodgepole pine and heavy stands of Douglas fir. Smoke is visible from Choteau, Augusta, and along Montana State Highway 287.” Authorities asked those in the area to stay out of the way of fire traffic and crews working there.
The park containing the blaze is named after Meriwether Lewis (1774–1809) and William Clark (1770–1838), whom U.S. President Thomas Jefferson chose to explore lands west of the Mississippi River that comprised the Louisiana Purchase. They started their journey in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1804, reaching the Pacific Ocean nearly two years later.
