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.
Shawn Szabo, furbearer staff biologist for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, said 76 of the bucktoothed rodents were dropped into what is now the Frank Church–River of No Return Wilderness in specially built boxes rigged to open when they hit the ground.
“Monitoring that followed showed the translocation was highly successful, with new colonies established and beavers persisting in the area for many years,” Szabo said.
Geronimo Touches Down
The great beaver airlift was the idea of Elmo Heter, a Fish and Game warden.
The town of McCall was in a post-war expansion, and the beavers’ habitat and food sources were being destroyed to build homes and businesses. Heter realized that beavers are a necessary part of the wetlands, so he focused on finding a way to relocate them to more remote areas where they could thrive. He came up with the idea of dropping them into remote areas by parachute.
Animal relocation is very stressful on the animals. The quicker it can be accomplished, the better the animal’s chance of survival. But no one had dropped beavers by parachute before.
Heter tested the transport box design with a live beaver, appropriately named Geronimo because he made several test jumps. Geronimo made multiple successful jumps—the boxes had air holes and were designed to open easily upon landing. Conservationists determined that younger beavers did better when relocated and selected a gender mix of three females and one male per box drop.
The boxes measured 30 inches by 12 by 8 and held two beavers. Two boxes were fitted together using a hinge. Elastic bands and a rope were used to keep the boxes together during transport.
The loaded beaver boxes were put onto aircraft to be pushed out over remote areas identified as good habitat for beavers. The boxes snapped open on landing, and the beavers quickly got to work, foraging for food, building dams, and establishing a colony. It was a relatively inexpensive project because after World War II there was no shortage of surplus parachutes.
Long-Term Success
As noted in a 1949 article in Popular Mechanics magazine, the “parabeavers” relocation technique proved to be more cost-effective and easier on the animals than trucking them into the backcountry, as the beavers often perished en route. The animals not only arrived alive, but they also appear to have thrived, said Szabo, as the beavers are still in the area.
According to Szabo, beavers can live as long as 21 years provided they don’t encounter a predator, winter food shortages, or dam failures. The descendants of Geronimo and his 75 parachuting compatriots are about 15 generations removed from the first parachuted beaver released into the wild.
If this story sounds like the plot of a kid’s book, you’d be correct. There have been several books written on this topic; one of them is When Beavers Flew by Kirsten Tracy, with illustrations by Luisa Uribe.
It is one of several books written on the topic, said Szabo, adding that animal deployment by aircraft is no longer utilized by the Idaho Fish and Game, as they prefer carefully planned live-trapping and ground relocation techniques.
However, “aircraft continue to play an important role in wildlife work across Idaho when they are the best tool for the job, including big game captures, aerial surveys, and fish stocking in remote mountain lakes,” Szabo said.
