The great beaver relocation of 1948

In 1948, 76 beavers were dropped from an airplane with parachutes. All but one survived.

It started because beavers were causing problems in a small town in the mountains of the northwestern United States. The wildlife department wanted to move them to a remote basin deeper in the wilderness, but transporting them overland by mule wasn’t working. The beavers got aggressive in the heat. The mules panicked at the smell. Too many animals were lost on the way.

An employee named Elmo Heter came up with something else. Surplus parachutes from the war. Wooden boxes designed to snap open on impact. Drop them from a plane. They tested it on one old male beaver they named Geronimo. He was dropped over and over on a flying field. Heter wrote that after a while, Geronimo just gave up and would crawl back into his box on his own, ready to go up again.

On 14 August 1948, a twin-engine plane took off with eight crates. Over the following days, 76 beavers were parachuted ...