Using a surplus of parachutes left over from the war, officials devised a plan to airlift the beavers out of suburbia, dropping them in specially designed boxes over Frank Church.
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Idaho’s fish and game department struggled with beaver overpopulation at the time and made a decision to pack up the rodents into boxes and parachute them off a plane, according to The Associated Press.
A short caption alongside the film reads: “Parachuting beavers!”
Boise State Public Radio reported that the department’s historian recently uncovered a film “Fur for the Future”, which documented the quirky project.
Beavers in the state are still caught and relocated as a way to help the habitat, just not by parachute.
These beavers may be a few of the only ones to get such a sweet ride to their new home.
The first beaver to take the dive as part of the program was Geronimo.
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The video has now been digitized and released by the Idaho Historical Society and the Department of Fish and Game on YouTube. Steve Nadeau, Fish and Game’s statewide fur bearer manager, said they “haven’t done airplane drops for 50-plus years, but it apparently worked pretty well back then to re-establish them in remote places”.
