Animal Swaps

How many wild turkeys can you get for a river otter? Answer: in Iowa, two. At last week's Midwest Fish and Wildlife Conference in Grand Rapids and on other occasions, conservation administrators from at least 33 states have taken to arranging trades of animals that are abundant in one state but rare or nonexistent in another. The motivation for the swaps is ecological: not to provide more targets for a state's hunters but simply to increase the diversity of its fauna.

Iowa has promised Kentucky 240 wild turkeys for 120 river otters. Colorado gave away pine martens, a relative of the weasel, for otters from Wisconsin. An official from Minnesota plans to travel to Alaska to get 50 trumpeter swan eggs. In one of the more elaborate wildlife trades to date, Idaho sent 50 chukar partridges to North Dakota, which sent 150 sharp-tailed grouse to Kansas, which sent 50 wild turkeys to Idaho. The trading has even taken on an international flavor. Michigan made an across-the-border swap with Canada: wild turkeys for moose. "It's like trading baseball cards," says Steven Gray, an Ohio wildlife official. "Say I have a Pete Rose and you have a Dwight Gooden. Arkansas has wild turkeys and wants ruffed grouse. We've got ruffed grouse."

Swapping nongame animals is an outgrowth of a voluntary income tax "checkoff" program that began in Colorado in 1977. The provision allows citizens to earmark as much of their annual state tax refund as they like for wildlife conservation programs, which include transporting and monitoring animals that have been acquired from other states. Ecology-minded citizens have responded enthusiastically. For example, Michigan took in $490,000 last year, up from $272,000 when it began its program in 1983. Wisconsin collected $472,000, compared with $291,000 in 1983. "State agencies realize they have another constituency besides hunters and fishermen," says Scott Feierabend, a wildlife biologist and legislative representative for the National Wildlife Federation in Washington. "They're considering bird watchers and those who don't pursue wildlife with a gun."

Still, no one has yet taken Montana up on its offer to trade grizzly bears, and at least one of the swaps has been a dismal failure. Ohio acquired dozens of Allegheny wood rats, most of them from Kentucky, and released them in the central part of the state. But none of them have survived. Concedes State Wildlife Administrator Denis Case: "This turned out to be an excellent program for feeding great horned owls."