Wild Turkey on the Rocks? Ecosystems of Southeast Impact Numbers

Meleagris gallopavo.The reintroduction of America's beloved
holiday fowl has been one of conservation's great triumphs--
but now some populations are plummeting. What's going on?
Photograph by Andrew Zuckerman.

By T. Edward Nickens

Audubon Magazine, November-December 2013

 

The scene is a staple of American holiday traditions, a verity founded during the birth pangs of the nation. The place: Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts. The year: 1621. In countless illustrations of what is considered that first Thanksgiving feast, tables groan with the harvest of field and forest while black-clad Pilgrims and leather-clad Wampanoag natives encircle the centerpiece dish--a perfectly browned wild turkey. While there's no question that a harvest meal was held in Plymouth Colony, there's no direct evidence that a turkey made the menu. The one surviving document that mentions the formative feast suggests that the big bird on the table--or birds, considering that the gathering drew 140 or more--was likely goose or duck. Just prior to the fete, wrote Plymouth leader Edward Winslow, the colony governor "sent foure men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoyce together after we had gathered the fruit of our labours."

Kathleen Wall, a culinary expert at Plimoth Plantation, the Massachusetts living history museum, provides some insight. "When Englishmen referred to 'fowling,' they are generally talking about waterfowl. Winslow specifically mentions deer, so we know there was venison on the table. And earlier, the governor wrote that turkeys were plentiful that year." After that oblique reference, however, the turkey track goes cold. "As far as that first harvest meal," Wall allows, "we simply can't say there was turkey."

These days that's not the only mystery surrounding Meleagris gallopavo. The reintroduction of the wild turkey to North America is frequently touted as the greatest wildlife conservation success story of the last century. Heavily hunted since the earliest days of European occupation, pushed out of huge swaths of its range by logging and land clearing, wild turkey populations reached a nadir in the early 1930s, with a continental population of about 30,000 birds. Today, after a massive trap-and-transfer effort that has spanned a quarter-century, about 7 million wild turkeys strut, gobble, and yelp from every state where they are native, and then some. "This was a monumental, continent-wide effort," says Tom Hughes, assistant vice president of conservation programs for the National Wild Turkey Federation. "There aren't many stories as inspiring in the history of wildlife conservation."

See full article, http://goo.gl/vVy2gc.