Parachuting Beavers
On a crazy conservation program
Imagine you’re a beaver.
Now imagine you’re being dropped out of an airplane.
This could’ve been you in 1948.
In the mid-20th century, many Idaho residents moved from urban areas to the state’s rural southwest corner. These new residents came into conflict old ones: Beavers. The beavers cut down trees and built dams, which flooded the yards and damaged the basements of the new residents.
But rather than killing the beavers, the Idaho Fish and Game Department decided to relocate them to the Chamberlain Basin. In forested settings, beavers’ ecosystem engineering is an asset: They can help maintain wetlands, reduce erosion, and create habitats for other animals.
This relocation was easier said than done. As early as 1936, the US Interior Department had transported beavers to eroded areas to build dams. Normally, this was done with trucks or horses, but Idaho’s backcountry was difficult to navigate by land, and moving beavers via horse was tough on both animals. Elmo Heter, of Idaho Fish and Game, wrote in 1950: “Rough trips on pack animals are very hard on [beavers]. Horses and mules become spooky and quarrelsome when loaded with a struggling, odorous pair of live beavers.”
It was, in other words, a pain. So a faster, safer method of transport was needed.
Enter parachutes. Specifically, parachutes leftover from World War II.
The team at Fish and Game set out to design a beaver transport box. They wanted a wooden box that would open upon landing. At first, the team tested the boxes with dummy weights, but then they turned to a live beaver: Geronimo. They put Geronimo in different boxes and dropped the boxes to ensure they would safely transport the beavers and open upon landing.
“Each time [Geronimo] scrambled out of the box, someone was on hand to pick him up.” Heter wrote in a report on the trials. “Poor fellow! He finally became resigned, and as soon as we approached him, would crawl back into his box ready to go aloft again.”
The final design included two lidless wooden boxes held together by a rope that would snap open upon landing.
It was put into action in August 1948 when 76 beavers were relocated by parachute to the Chamberlain Basin. “Before lunch time, the beaver would have an airplane ride,” an April 1949 Popular Mechanics article noted. “He’d be tossed out of the plane by parachute, would walk away from the self-opening container when the parachute touched ground and would be making himself at home on a stream several hundred miles away from where he had been caught, in an area where he couldn’t cause trouble.”
All but one beaver survived — he died in transit by escaping his crate mid-air and jumping from a height of 75 feet.
Nonetheless, the Idaho Fish and Game Department considered the program a success. It cost just seven dollars to transport each beaver (equivalent to $74 today), most of the parachutes were returned for reuse by backpackers or rangers, and, a year later, the transported beavers were building dams, breeding, and storing food.
Today, more than 70 years later, the areas where the beavers were resettled are lusher and greener than neighboring lands. When a 2018 forest fire burned through the Basin, the beaver-rich areas were resilient. The parachute program worked.
And Geronimo had was on the first flight to the Chamberlain Basin. He was accompanied by three young females, and he lived out the rest of his days happily in the rural woods.
Notes.
I first learned about the beaver drop from an episode of the Everything is Alive podcast, where Ian Chillag interviews a beaver: Listen here.
The bearer drop has gotten quite a bit of press coverage: National Geographic, Time, Spokesman-Review, Earth Sky, and NPR.
Heter’s original report is here.
The 1949 Popular Mechanics article is here.
Cartoons generated with Dall-E / Chat GPT 4.0.
And here’s a video the Fish and Game Department made about the event…
I absolutely love this. Positive environmental impact and happy beavers all combined in a story that made me smile!