Idaho’s Great Beaver Airlift

Remembering a time when the woodland animals dropped from the sky.

Meg Godlewski

Friday, October 17, 2025 at 09:06 AM ET

Verified

Edited By:

Travis Tingle

Parachuting beaver boxes dropped from an airplane. [Credit: Idaho Department of Fish and Game, Pittman Robertson Trout Fund]

Key Takeaways:

In 1948, Idaho successfully relocated 76 beavers from the expanding city of McCall to remote areas by parachuting them from aircraft in custom-built boxes.
Conceived by Fish and Game warden Elmo Heter and tested with a beaver named Geronimo, this innovative method was chosen to quickly move beavers whose habitat was being destroyed.
The "parabeaver" project proved highly successful, establishing thriving beaver colonies that persist to this day, though modern wildlife management now favors ground-based relocation.

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Usually, aircraft and wild animals, such as deer, rabbits, and birds, are a bad combination.

You have probably heard about aircraft and animal collisions at your airport, and the animal always loses. But sometimes, aviation comes to the rescue of animals. That was the case in 1948 when aircraft were used to relocate beavers from the growing city of McCall, Idaho, to central Idaho, where they thrived. And the beavers didn’t just fly aboard the aircraft for relocation—they were dropped by parachute.