Comments on: Beavers On Parachutes

By: Because, why not? | Not So Fast

Because, why not? | Not So Fast — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 23:53:14 +0000

[...] day in Idaho some people got together and decided to parachute beavers into the mountains. This is that story government report. Like this:LikeBe the first to like this. This entry was [...]

By: Les Nessman

Les Nessman — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 14:31:44 +0000

As God is my witness, I thought beavers could fly!

By: Von what-the-f*ck » Blog Archive » The Great Beaver Drop

Von what-the-f*ck » Blog Archive » The Great Beaver Drop — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 09:55:40 +0000

[...] the rest of the story at Smithsonian’s Air Space magazine. Link -via [...]

By: World’s Strangest | The Great Beaver Drop

World’s Strangest | The Great Beaver Drop — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 07:35:35 +0000

[...] the rest of the story at Smithsonian’s Air & Space magazine. Link -via [...]

By: Soltar bichos con paracaidas. Todo un clásico « Quince quinces y un chorlito

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 19:40:20 +0000

[...] Aquí se hacen eco de un artículo científico de los 50 en el que en Idaho, para abaratar costes en las reintroducciones de castores, éstos se lanzaban desde avioneta, más o menos tal que así. [...]

By: Heather Goss

Heather Goss — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 17:03:14 +0000

Hi JT, you’ve got some good questions there. Most of them are answered in the PDF report by Heter linked at the top. They noted the ideal transplanting time was July and August, because any earlier and the beavers would migrate, but any later and they wouldn’t have time to get settled in before winter. However, later he does say they did the parachuting in “the fall of 1948,” without specifying the months, given that they observed them all to be successful, it seems like it must have been soon enough before winter.

There actually would have been about 19 colonies, not just one. Heter explains that the ideal grouping was 4 beavers (1 male and 3 females, or 2 males and 2 females) to start a colony, so with 76 beavers, that would make 19 colonies (with a pair in each box, so two airdrops per colony). Heter says “observations made late in 1949 showed all the airborne transplantings to be successful.” The report doesn’t directly answer how they knew for sure all the beavers survived the drop, but flying at just 500-800 feet, and given that the box opened immediately upon reaching the ground, it seems likely that they could have observed from their vantage point above by circling around.

By: JT

JT — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 16:21:38 +0000

Hmmm…how exactly did they know the mortality rate from the drops? They couldn’t have been there observing them all because of the difficult terrain, the given reason for this bizarre idea. It’s logically likely that more of the poor beaver suffered on those drops than are reported. In what season were they dropped? Was there time to establish lodges and dens before winter? If nothing else, stress would be high. How do they know the surviving, stressed beaver ever found each other again? That one colony was successfully established says nothing about the total number of beaver sacrificed to an experiment.

By: S.Mikhail

S.Mikhail — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 07:58:42 +0000

Fascinating article–and made me LOL a couple of times! A good example of innovating technologies and techniques sepcifically for the beneit of of the natural world, rather than using exisiting ones as they are, which can sometimes have undesirable consequences (since they were first and foremost designed for humans).

And quite simple and neat too! If this was NASA or something, they’d have spent immense fortune and manpower developing remotely-controlled eletromechanical boxes (with GPS traceability to boot) that wouldn’t have functionned a lot better than their simpler, cheaper counterparts.

It might be a bit late, but well done Idaho Fish and Game Department!

By: Improbable Research » Blog Archive » Transplanting Beavers by Airplane and Parachute

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 01:45:29 +0000

[...] vol. 14, no. 2, April 1950, pp. 143-7. The Atlantic did a nice piece about it, as did The Daily Planet. The author, at the Idaho Fish and Game Department, McCall, Idaho, [...]