CONCORD, NH — No one wants a weasel on the Thanksgiving table, but swapping turkeys for other animals was once surprisingly common.
The turkey trade—for wildlife conservation, not dinner—has been a key part of one of North America's biggest conservation success stories. After declining to just a few thousand birds in the late 1880s, the wild turkey population has grown to about 7 million birds in 49 states, with even more in Canada and Mexico, according to the National Wild Turkey Federation.
In many cases, recovery depended on trade. Exchange rates varied, but Oklahoma once traded walleyes and prairie chickens for turkeys from Arkansas and Missouri. Colorado traded mountain goats for Idaho turkeys. The Canadian province of Ontario received 274 turkeys from New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Michigan, Missouri and Iowa in exchange for moose, river otters and partridges.
“Wildlife biologists are not lacking in creativity,” said Patt Dorsey, western region conservation director for the National Wild Turkey Federation.
West Virginia in particular seemed to have plenty of turkeys to share. In 1969, the company shipped 26 turkeys to New Hampshire in exchange for 25 fishermen, members of the weasel family once prized for their skins. Later, otters and quail were involved in the trade.
“They were our currency for all of our wildlife that we restored,” said Holly Morris, furbearer and small game project manager for the West Virginia Division 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-1800s, when deforestation and unregulated hunting caused their populations to plummet. Early restoration efforts in the 1940s and '50s involved raising turkeys on farms, but that was not successful, Dorsey said.
“Turkeys raised in pens didn’t do very well in the wild,” she said. “That’s when we started catching them in the wild and moving them to other places to rebuild their populations, and they really took off.”
Wild turkeys had not been seen in New Hampshire for more than 100 years when the state received its flock from West Virginia. Although these birds quickly succumbed to the harsh winter, another flock sent from New York in 1975 fared better. Through careful management that included moving the birds across the state dozens of times over subsequent decades, the population grew to about 40,000 birds, said Dan Ellingwood, a biologist with the New Hampshire Department of Fish and Game. It will likely far exceed expectations at the time of reintroduction, he said.
“Turkeys are incredibly adaptive,” he said. “The severity of the winter has changed, the landscape has changed, but the population has really grown.”
Turkeys play an important role in a healthy ecosystem as both predator and prey and are popular bait for hunters, he said. But restoration efforts are also important simply for the sake of preserving native species, he said.
Dorsey of the National Wild Turkey Federation agreed, noting that turkey restoration projects have also helped states revive populations of other species.
“There’s a lot of good work going on on the wild turkey’s back,” she said.
