The practice isn’t quite as cruel as it sounds for the beavers were equipped with parachutes, Mashable reports. Beavers that became trapped or were deemed to be in the wrong location were collected up and put into a box. The box was later placed into a light aircraft. A box containing a beaver was then fitted with a small parachute, and when the aircraft was flying over a desired area, individual beavers were hurled out of the plane close to a river or stream.
This has come to light from an archive video released by the Idaho Fish and Game Department. The video was thought lost and it was only recently uncovered by an historian named Sharon Clark, who was trying to find out if the parachuting beaver practice really took place. The video was mislabeled, making it hard to track down. The video has since been digitized and made available.
The video is titled Fur the Future. The practice extended beyond beavers and included muskrats and marten. Most of the droppings took place within the region of the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness.
The video is shown below, with the beaver throwing coming in around the seven minute mark:
The practice was undertaken as a solution to beaver overpopulation in some areas.It is thought that the beavers survived the experience; although the practice was not continued for a long period of time.
