Talk:Beaver drop

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Bruxton (talk) 12:39, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

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• Comment or view
• Article history

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• ... that in 1948 the Idaho Department of Fish and Game parachuted beavers into Central Idaho? Source: transport beavers from the McCall and Payette Lake region of southwestern Idaho to the Chamberlain Basin, in central Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountain Range
  • ALT1: ... that 76 beavers parachuted into Central Idaho in 1948? Source: In the fall of 1948 76 live beavers were dropped with only one casualty.
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Carrbridge Packhorse Bridge

Created by Lightburst (talk). Self-nominated at 21:35, 25 February 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Beaver drop; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

• I will review this. TompaDompa (talk) 22:32, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy compliance:

• Adequate sourcing: - See below.
• Neutral:
• Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook eligibility:

• Cited: - It seems rather silly to me, but this technically does not meet WP:DYK criterion 3b about citation placement. This can be trivially fixed by adding "76" to the second sentence of the WP:LEAD and citing https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/why-beavers-were-parachuted-into-the-idaho-wilderness. That way, all facts in ALT1—the number of beavers, the parachuting, the year it happened, and the location—are cited properly in the same place.
• Interesting:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Article created on 25 February, and is well beyond the required minimum length. All sources are, as far as I can tell, reliable for the material they are cited for. Earwig reveals no copyvio and I think the article falls on the right side of WP:Close paraphrasing (though with less of a margin than I would prefer). There are no obvious neutrality issues. QPQ has been done. ALT1 is great, so let's go with that one. Some comments on the content:

• I have done some minor copyediting.
• decided to move 76 beavers because they help maintain wetlands, reduce erosion, and help create habitat for birds and fish. – well, no. According to the source, they decided to move them because they were causing problems for residents, and they decided that moving them was better than killing them because of the listed reasons. The list is also bordering on WP:Close paraphrasing, so I would rephrase it.
• Time (magazine) article – it should either say "Time magazine article" or simply "Time article", but no parentheses.
• I would include Time's 1939 estimate of the return on investment per beaver: $300 return on an $8 investment.
• fitted together like a suitcase – including the word "hinge" somewhere in the explanation would go a long way towards clarifying this.
• This is obviously not a DYK requirement, but a diagram of the boxes would be really helpful.
• with eight crates of beavers a pilot and a conservation officer. – missing comma.
• In the following days 76 beavers were also parachuted into meadows. – also?
• One beaver forced it's way [...] the beaver then jumped to it's death – its.

Ping Lightburst. TompaDompa (talk) 23:35, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

@TompaDompa: Thank you so much for the great review! And thank you for the help! I am going to number the concerns so that I can keep track

1. 3b criteria I moved the citation to the lead second sentence along with 76
2. Decided to move 76 beavers: I have rewritten the section. Thank you for pointing out the issue
3. Time Magazine I removed the parethesis
4. Time's 1939 estimate I added the information about $ benefit
5. fitted together like a suitcase the article here mentions how the 2" elastic bands acted like hinges but I will make that clearer in the article by adding hinged and moving the sentence about the rubber bands right after.
6. Diagram of the boxes - I agree it would be nice - I have one and will have to see if I can add it without violating any piolicy
7. with eight crates of beavers... I added the comma
8. In the following days 76 beavers... The actual text of the source is "August 14, 1948, as eight crates of beavers were loaded into a twin-engine Beechcraft Travel Air, alongside a pilot and a conservation officer. Over the next few days, 76 beavers parachuted into wilderness meadows." source
9. Jumped to its death I made the correction

Lightburst (talk) 01:00, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

On number 8, my point was that I don't understand what the "also" is doing in the sentence. It seems like that word should be removed. At any rate, ALT1 is ready. TompaDompa (talk) 19:57, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

done, thank you for the review! Lightburst (talk) 21:02, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Beaver drop/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 14:40, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Comments

• Well I scratched my head over whether this was actually notable, especially as this basically reflects a single-event news splash about the rediscovered video in 2015. The alternative would be a small section (or paragraph) at Beaver, where conservation and relocation are basically unmentioned.

• Parachuting beavers proved to be more cost-effective and it decreased the beaver mortality rates more than other alternative methods of relocation. [10] - suggest "Parachuting proved to be more cost-effective, and it had a lower mortality rate than other methods of relocation.", and close up before the ref.

  Done Lightburst (talk) 17:33, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

• If we take Nadeau's comment at face value, parachuting ended by 1965. Do we know why, if the approach was cheaper and killed fewer beavers, why they switched from flying back to driving at that time?

  I am not sure but will look for any RS that answers the ?. Lightburst (talk) 17:33, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

  Here is and article that claims, Liebenthal says he’s not sure why the project didn’t continue past 1948. "But my assumption is that they accomplished what they wanted to accomplish in the area and there was no need to continue." Lightburst (talk) 18:07, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

  Well, with the Liebenthal attribution it's certainly usable, and state public radio is a RS. I guess the unstated/unstateable subtext is that there have been no mass rehomings since, and the odd one that is still done is by road.

  added Lightburst (talk) 17:13, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Images

• Why are we not including a fair-use image of one of the beavers being parachuted in? It's clearly relevant. The images are PD as they were published without a copyright notice. I can fix you up with a selection if you're unsure of the tech or NFUR approach.

Thanks for that. It is a good idea and I would appreciate that effort. Lightburst (talk) 15:29, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

OK, will do.... here you are, feel free to use as you like.

• 
  Packing a beaver into a drop box
• 
  Beaver drop box parachuting to land
• 
  Beaver drop box sprung open on landing

• Great images. I added relevant images. The one of the chute does not show much so I skipped it for now. Lightburst (talk) 17:43, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

• I see you have Heter's diagram of a drop box as PD; the same rationale may well apply to the Fish and Game department's video images. Anyway, the diagram is clearly relevant and properly licensed.

Sources

• At the moment, the article's claim to Notability rests principally on refs [1] National Geographic and [9] Idaho Fish and Game (since the "Background" does not contribute to the subject as such, and "Legacy" is mainly about the news splash; though [2] Popular Mechanics is also a contemporary account. The case for keeping the article (rather than merging to Beaver) would be clearer if [2] were cited also in the main 'Parachuting' section.

• Could be worth citing The Guardian on this.

Added the Guardian in the Legacy section Lightburst (talk) 15:57, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Noted.

• East Idaho News may also be worth looking at.

  This source had a good quote that fit in Legacy. Lightburst (talk) 16:04, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

  Good, that's greatly improved the section.

  Check it out. Beaver Drop Beer Lightburst (talk) 17:52, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

  Yes, it's a shame we can't include their logo but I don't think it'd pass the image police. But by all means add that archive link in a footnote.

• Ranchers' Friend and Farmers' Foe: Reshaping Nature with Beaver Reintroduction in California (Fountain, Steven M. “Ranchers’ Friend and Farmers’ Foe: Reshaping Nature with Beaver Reintroduction in California.” Environmental History 19, no. 2 (2014): 239–69. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24690558.) provides a detailed discussion of the reintroduction issues in a Californian context, and mentions the Idaho approach at the end ("Idaho perhaps offered the most extreme cases of translocation, where game managers pushed "beaver drop boxes" attached to war-surplus parachutes out of airplanes over remote and rugged terrain.[60]"); its ref [60] stated "Joseph P. Linduska, ed., "State by State," in Restoring America's Wildlife, 367; "Final Report: Beaver Management of the State of Oregon Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act, 1940 Season Project No. 1-D-l," "Miscellaneous Files, 1934-1955," DNRR, F3735:543; "Preliminary Project Statement, Idaho Project 1-D," n. d., DNRR, F3735:543; Elmo W. Heter, "Transplanting Beavers by Airplane and Parachute," Journal of Wildlife Management 14 (1950): 143-47. Heter reported only one fatality out of seventy-six animals dropped in 1948." I don't think there's much new here but it is a solid "Reliable Source" so worth citing.

Summary

• The article seems to have a coherent and reliably-cited story, and to be suitably illustrated. I still think it would be helpful to cite Fountain et al (the last item above).

  I added a sentence about the California program and their comment about the Idaho program from the Fountain source. Lightburst (talk) 17:15, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.