The returns I: otter and beaver, the fur animals back

1935 — 2005

The otter: The river otter was the fur trade's second prize and its second disappearance: native populations "declined sharply through the early 1900s due to unregulated harvest and habitat loss and were believed extirpated from the state by 1942," in the evaluation published in the Proceedings of the Indiana Academy of Science. The return was deliberate and dated: between 1995 and 1999 the DNR released 303 river otters obtained from Louisiana at twelve sites in six watersheds — and two of the six, the St. Joseph and the upper Wabash, are Fort Wayne's own waters, the St. Joseph releases putting otters directly into the river that flows through the city. The proof of establishment came from the neighboring basin: among the untagged young otters recovered in non-target watersheds — animals no one released, born wild — the evaluators list the Maumee watershed, in Allen County. The otter was removed from Indiana's endangered list in 2005, and the DNR now records otters reported in every Indiana county.

The beaver: The beaver's Indiana timeline is told by its sources as a small range rather than a date: the federal technical assessment carried by the DNR says unregulated harvest and habitat destruction caused "severe declines or extirpation of beavers by 1900 in many parts of the United States"; the Friends of the Limberlost's history, from the Berne Witness, says beaver were "completely trapped out of our state by the late 1880s or early 1890s"; Goose Pond's account says "essentially gone from Indiana by the mid-nineteenth century." All three are printed because the record does not reconcile them further. The return is exact: in 1935 the Indiana Department of Conservation obtained a few breeding pairs from Wisconsin and released them at Jasper-Pulaski Fish & Wildlife Area, followed by strategic relocations. Beavers are now found in almost every Indiana county — and in Fort Wayne they are downtown, girdling riverbank trees along the riverfront in such numbers that, as WANE reported and the county page repeats, beavers killed around 150 city trees and the city took to wrapping trunks with wire. The animal whose price emptied the rivers now costs the city a tree-protection program.

Sources:

1. Johnson, Walker and Hudson, "Prospects for Restoring River Otters in Indiana," Proceedings of the Indiana Academy of Science 116(1):71–83 (the 1942 extirpation belief; the 303 releases, 1995–99; the Maumee (Allen) untagged juveniles), via Indiana University Indianapolis journals.
2. Indiana Department of Natural Resources, "Fish and Wildlife: River Otter" (the 1995 program; delisting 2005; reports in every county), in.gov.
3. Indiana DNR, "Beaver" (the 1935 Wisconsin pairs at Jasper-Pulaski; present distribution), as carried on the Society's Allen County animals page, acgsi.org; Curt Burnette, "Beavers at Limberlost," Friends of the Limberlost (the late-1880s trapping-out); WANE 15 report on downtown Fort Wayne beaver damage, via acgsi.org.