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Four arcs, each with a date at each end — and one shared shape: every one of these animals was gone or nearly gone from Indiana within living memory of Chapman's page, and every one is present in this county today because someone, on a dated program, put it back or let it spread back.
Deer. Chapman in 1880: the Virginia deer "quite numerous" once, by then among the "very rare." The return: from 1934 to 1942 the Division of Fish and Game released 296 white-tailed deer, bought chiefly from Wisconsin with others from Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, principally in the southern hill country, with 111 more released 1953–1955; northern Indiana's herd rebuilt substantially by immigration from Michigan, deer moving down the drainages. The herd was estimated at 5,000 in 1951, when the first modern season in 58 years was held; by 2020 the state estimate stood at about 680,000. For Lincoln Township the modern end of the arc needs no program record: deer are the township's ordinary large mammal — the banked parks record has them common throughout Potato Creek State Park, in this township's own ground.
Wild turkey. Chapman: "the choicest of game, has almost entirely disappeared" by 1880. Gone from Indiana by the early 1900s, on the DNR-told restoration history. The return began, improbably, with the Navy: turkeys established at the Crane naval depot in Martin County from Arkansas stock around 1956–1961, then a 1964 trade — 70 Indiana ruffed grouse for 21 Missouri turkeys released in the Hoosier National Forest — and trap-and-transfer across the state thereafter; the first modern Indiana turkey hunt was held in 1970, and the statewide flock is now estimated at about 120,000 birds. Potato Creek's record closes the arc locally: the park was designated an Important Bird Area in 2006 in part for its resident wild turkeys.
River otter. Chapman lists the otter among the "very rare" in 1880. The state end is the sharpest date in this section: otters were "believed extirpated from the state by 1942" (Johnson et al., Proceedings of the Indiana Academy of Science). The return is a named, counted program: 303 otters obtained from Louisiana were released at 12 sites in six watersheds — the St. Joseph among them — between December 1995 and 1999; reproduction was confirmed at release sites, and by 2005 otters were reported in 65 counties. The status dates then fall in sequence, and the conflict among them prints whole: the Academy paper and several DNR-told accounts give removal from the state endangered list in 2005; the DNR's 2023 Natural Resources Commission agenda item gives delisting in 2009. Both stand, each on its carrier; the regulated trapping season that followed is not in conflict — opened 2015, statewide quota since raised to 750. An otter release program that named the St. Joseph watershed among its six is this township's river system receiving its animal back, and the record prints at watershed strength because the release-site list reached does not name a Lincoln Township site.
Beaver. Chapman puts the beaver first among the followers of the buffalo — gone "with or before it." The trade's casualty is dated at state frame: beaver were "completely trapped out" of Indiana by the late 1880s or early 1890s. The return: in 1935 the Indiana Department of Conservation obtained breeding pairs from Wisconsin and released them at Jasper–Pulaski Fish & Wildlife Area — in the Kankakee basin, one county tier south-west of this township — and the animal re-established across the state, the Kankakee valley among its strongholds in the mammal record from Hahn (1909) forward. The beaver is this section's park engineer returned: the animal whose dams made marsh micro-country before the ditches unmade the marsh, back at work in the basin's remaining wetlands, Potato Creek's included, at the record's general strength for the park and basin rather than a township release date, which no source reached supplies.
Sources: Chapman (1880), p. 340; Indiana deer restoration record (Allen, Project W-2-R history; Purdue Extension FNR-153; Indiana Connection, 2022); Indiana turkey restoration history (Indiana Connection, 2022); Johnson et al., river otter reintroduction, Proceedings of the Indiana Academy of Science 116(1); Indiana DNR NRC agenda item 7 (August 2023) — the 2005/2009 delisting conflict printed unmerged; Friends of the Limberlost / DNR beaver record (1935, Jasper–Pulaski). Closure: DUG — all four arcs dated at both ends; county/township release-site precision for otter and beaver is the stated limit, settler: the DNR release-site lists by watershed.