Saving the Red Wolf
SINCE THE BEGINNING OF 2013, at least 11 endangered red wolves have died from gunshots in North Carolina, accounting for about 10 percent of the species’ entire wild population. Authorities investigating the deaths found one wolf wrapped in a plastic bag, its radio collar removed. In another case, they found only a severed collar in a farm field. These shootings represent an escalation of such killing in recent years and a major challenge for those working on red wolf recovery.
A Rare Species
Once inhabiting the southeastern United States and possibly even north into Pennsylvania,the red wolf is closely related to the coyote and the Algonquin wolf of eastern Canada. Red wolves weigh 50 to 85 pounds—about twice the size of a coyote—and measure about 26 inches tall at the shoulder. They mate for life and live in family packs typically composed of five to eight animals that range across an area of 25 to 50 square miles. In North Carolina they usually feed on deer, raccoons, rabbits and various rodents. Older pups help raise younger siblings and leave the pack when two or three years old, seeking territories and mates.
The red wolf is North America’s rarest wild canine, though not as rare as it was 40 years ago. By the 1970s, predator-control programs and habitat degradation had reduced the species to a remnant population in coastal Texas and Louisiana, where it was facing extinction from interbreeding with coyotes. As part of a recovery program, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) biologists took every surviving pure-blooded red wolf into captivity, a total of only 17 animals, and in 1980 declared the species extinct in the wild. Fourteen of the captives became the ancestors of all red wolves alive today—about 200 in captive-breeding facilities at some 40 sites around the nation and roughly 100 wild in North Carolina.
FWS biologists brought the last red wolves into captivity with the intention of reintroducing them into native habitat once a sufficient number had been bred. North Carolina’s Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge became the first release site with the introduction of four male-female pairs in 1987. The species now ranges across three national wildlife refuges, a Department of Defense bombing range, state-administered lands and private property, all in the northeastern part of the state, for a total of 1.7 million acres—an area slightly larger than the state of Delaware and nearly the size of Yellowstone National Park. “Against the longest of odds, the red wolf again roams the wild lands of eastern North Carolina,” says Tim Gestwicki, chief executive officer for the North Carolina Wildlife Federation (NCWF), an NWF affiliate that has aided the reintroduction program since its inception. Private lands serve as an important component because they are home to more than half the wolves. “There are many stewardship-oriented landowners who have been supportive of the red wolf program,” Gestwicki says. ...
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