A number of turkeys, wild turkeys, will miss Thanksgiving dinner this year.

Utah is one of two national sites selected by the National Wild Turkey Federation for what it is calling a Thanksgiving Release. The release of wild turkeys will take place this afternoon near the base of the Oquirrh Mountains, on property owned by Kennecott Utah Copper Corp.

Helping in the release will be 60 school-age children from grades two through five.

The objective is to release more wild turkeys back into native habitat. The second national release site is near Tampa, Fla. The exact number of birds to be released in Utah, said Dean Mitchell, upland game coordinator for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, will depend on how many birds biologist were able to trap.

The birds will be released today at 10 a.m.

This is the second release on Kennecott land. The first release was in a reclaimed mining area in Butterfield Canyon. Today, wild turkeys are a common sight in the canyon.

Utah's wild turkey program is considered one of the most successful and aggressive in the country, "which is probably one reason the federation chose Utah as a site to recognize wild-turkey recovery programs," he noted.

Turkey bones, feather blankets and early American rock art depicting turkeylike figures, leads biologists to believe that wild turkeys were once native to Utah. For a period, however, they disappeared. Utah started its re-introduction program in 1925. In the 1950s, a small number of Merriam's turkeys were brought into Utah, but it wasn't until 1989, when the Rio Grande species was brought into Utah from Texas, that the population started to increase.

The number of wild turkeys now in Utah is estimated at 18,000 to 20,000.

From 1998 through 2005, the DWR set a national record by placing more than 7,700 turkeys into new locations in Utah. Some of those birds were brought in from outside the state. The remainder were trapped in state and moved.

Now, said Mitchell, "Hundreds of people across the state are hearing and seeing these birds during their trips in the outdoors, and more and more hunters are applying for a permit to hunt them.

"Another thing this will do is help create awareness that, yes, we do have wild turkeys in Utah. And, that the big, black bird they hear gobbling is, indeed, a wild turkey."

The National Wild Turkey Federation and its partners have given wildlife agencies in the United States more than 139,000 wild turkey transport boxes, which have been used to transport more than 188,000 birds. Today, there are more than 7 million wild turkeys throughout North America.

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