The Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department says Vermont’s healthy—but once-extinct—wild turkey population is the result of a successful wildlife restoration project.
The department says wild turkeys had disappeared from the state in the mid-to-late 1800s when the land was cleared for farming, destroying habitat.
In 1969 and 1970, the department stocked 31 wild turkeys from New York in Rutland County as the state’s forest habitat could again support the birds.
They led to today’s population in the hundreds of thousands.
Photo of wild turkey by Mohan Nannapaneni from Pixabay.