Concord, New Hampshire — No one wants a weasel at the Thanksgiving table, but swapping turkeys for other animals has been surprisingly popular.
The turkey trade — to manage wildlife, not dinner — has been a key part of one of North America’s biggest conservation success stories. After the population of wild turkeys dwindled to a few thousand birds in the late 1880s, their numbers have increased to about 7 million birds in 49 states, plus more in Canada and Mexico, according to the National Wild Turkey Federation.
In many cases, the restoration process depended on trades. Exchange rates have varied, but Oklahoma once exchanged walleye and prairie chickens for turkeys from Arkansas and Missouri. Colorado traded mountain goats for Idaho turkeys. The Canadian province of Ontario ended up taking 274 turkeys from New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Michigan, Missouri and Iowa in exchange for moose, river otters and partridge.
“Wildlife biologists have no shortage of creativity,” said Pat Dorsey, western region conservation director for the Turkey National Wildlife Federation.
West Virginia in particular seemed to have an abundance of turkeys to share. In 1969, she sent 26 turkeys to New Hampshire for 25 hunters, a member of the weasel family that was once highly prized for its fur. Later trade included otters and bobwhite quail.
“They were our currency for all the wildlife we restored,” said Holly Morris, a furrier and small game project lead for the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources. “It’s just a way to help other agencies. We’re all on the same mission.”
Wild turkeys were abundant throughout the United States until the mid-19th century, when deforestation and unregulated hunting reduced their numbers. Early restoration efforts in the 1940s and 1950s included raising turkeys on farms, but that didn’t work well, Dorsey said.
“Turkeys raised in a barn did not do well in the wild,” she said. “Then we started capturing them from the wild and moving them to other places to restore their numbers, and they really took off.”
In New Hampshire, wild turkeys had not been seen in more than 100 years when the state acquired the West Virginia flock. Although these birds quickly succumbed to the harsh winter, another flock sent from New York in 1975 fared better. With careful management that included moving the birds around the state dozens of times over the following decades, the bird population rose to nearly 40,000 birds, said Dan Ellingwood, a biologist with the New Hampshire Department of Fish and Game. This likely exceeds expectations at the time of its reintroduction, he said.
“Turks are incredibly adaptable,” he said. “The severity of the winters have changed, the landscape has changed, and yet the population has actually gone up.”
Turkeys play an important role in a healthy ecosystem as both predator and prey, he said, and they also attract hunters. But he said restoration efforts are also important in order to ensure the persistence of native species.
Dorsey, of the National Wild Turkey Federation, agreed, noting that turkey restoration projects have also helped states revive their populations of other species.
“A lot of good work is done on the back of a wild turkey,” she said.