The wild turkeys that roam California were originally introduced from Texas.
did u guys know that turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo) are not even native to california despite the way they own the streets/rule the school in east bay and are found basically statewide
not only that but the california department of fish and wildlife (!!) [fka the department of fish and game because they were mainly focused on improving fishing and hunting stocks] tried to introduce turkeys as a game animal into the state THREE SEPARATE TIMES the last of which occurred AS LATE AS 1959
The first introduction by the [California Fish & Game Commission] occurred in 1908 with the release of 22 turkeys from Mexico to the San Bernardino Mountains. That year, turkeys were also released into lower Yosemite Valley, Sequoia National Park, and Tulare County. By 1918, the initial stock of turkeys was wiped out, in part due to blackhead disease. In 1928, the F&GC attempted another effort at stocking wild turkeys in California, this time with birds bred in captivity from Arizona. 3,350 game farm turkeys were released in 23 counties throughout the state [Ed.: 23 COUNTIES??!??!!?!] but the program was eventually unsuccessful at establishing a viable wild turkey population. These populations of wild turkey didn’t fare well out in the wild, having been raised to depend on humans for food and shelter and the program was shuttered in 1951. It wasn’t until the California Fish and Game Commission started to populate areas of California with wild-caught turkeys from Texas in 1959 that the introduced species started to gain a foothill in the state. The commission started with sixty-two Texas birds that were released in San Diego County. This subspecies, the Rio Grande turkey (M. g. intermedia), has been widely introduced throughout the western United States and makes up most of the population of wild turkeys in California. Today, wild turkeys are established in about 29,000 square miles in California according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. This represents 18.5% of the total area of California. 2004 estimations of the total wild turkey population in California was 242,000.
btw i know this article/website layout looks like some shady AI-generated thing but i looked it up the author is a real person with a consistent research background and all the sources cited lead to real places that make the claims they are cited in service of ^_^
gee the landscape is really more severely dominated by human beings fucking around specifically the fish & game commission trying to give people interesting things to shoot... see also beavers (Castor canadensis) in southern california oh and guess the fuck what BLACK BEARS IN THE SAN GABRIEL/SAN BERNARDINO MOUNTAINS they were also fucking introduced...........formerly grizzly range hence the name of big bear lake los osos etc but black bears were brought in in the '30s from literally yosemite to give people something to shoot like wtf

















