CONCORD, N.H. — While no one would want a weasel as their Thanksgiving centerpiece, there was a time when replacing turkeys with other creatures was not unheard of. This peculiar practice played a crucial role in a significant wildlife conservation success story across North America.

In a strategic move to manage wildlife populations, rather than serve them at dinner, turkeys were traded for various animals, helping to revive their numbers from just a few thousand in the late 1880s to an impressive 7 million today. These birds now thrive across 49 states and extend into Canada and Mexico, according to the National Wild Turkey Federation.

Restoration efforts often hinged on these exchanges, which varied in terms of the wildlife involved. For instance, Oklahoma once traded walleye and prairie chickens to Arkansas and Missouri for their turkeys. Similarly, Colorado obtained turkeys from Idaho by offering mountain goats in return. In Canada, Ontario welcomed 274 turkeys from several U.S. states, including New York and New Jersey, by providing moose, river otters, and partridge.

“Wildlife biologists are nothing if not inventive,” remarked Patt Dorsey, director of conservation for the National Wild Turkey Federation’s western region, emphasizing the creative solutions employed in these efforts.

West Virginia, in particular, proved to be a generous turkey supplier. In 1969, the state sent 26 turkeys to New Hampshire in exchange for 25 fishers, a weasel-family species once valued for its fur. Subsequent trades involved otters and bobwhite quail, showcasing the diverse range of species involved in these conservation trades.

“They were like our currency for all our wildlife that we restored,” said Holly Morris, furbearer and small game project leader at the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources. “It’s just a way to help out other agencies. We’re all in the same mission.”

Wild turkeys were abundant across the U.S. until the mid-1800s, when the clearing of forestland and unregulated hunting led the population to plummet. Early restoration efforts in the 1940s and 50s involved raising turkeys on farms, but that didn’t work well, Dorsey said.

“Turkeys that had been raised in a pen didn’t do very well in the wild,” she said. “That’s when we started capturing them out of the wild and moving them around to other places to restore their population, and they really took off.”

In New Hampshire, wild turkeys hadn’t been seen for more than 100 years when the state got the West Virginia flock. Though those birds quickly succumbed to a harsh winter, another flock sent from New York in 1975 fared better. With careful management that included moving birds around the state dozens of times over the ensuing decades, the population has grown to roughly 40,000 birds, said Dan Ellingwood, a biologist with the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department. That’s likely well beyond the expectations at the time of reintroduction, he said.

“Turkeys are incredibly adaptive,” he said. “Winter severity has changed, the landscape has changed, and yet the population really took off.”

Turkeys play an important role in a healthy ecosystem as both predator and prey, he said, and are a popular draw for hunters. But the restoration effort also is important just for the sake of ensuring native species continue to persist, he said.

Dorsey, at the National Wild Turkey Federation agreed, noting that turkey restoration projects also helped states revive their populations of other species.

“A lot of good work gets done on the back of the wild turkey,” she said.