Red wolf makes comeback in North Carolina

It was the first carnivore ever to be reintroduced to the wild after being declared extinct. It's also an animal that has symbolic meaning to the University. The red wolf, through efforts by government funded programs and institutions such as N.C. State, is making a comeback in North Carolina and around the country.

Michael Morse, wildlife biologist for the Red Wolf Program at the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, said red wolves were reintroduced to North Carolina in 1987, after their numbers were at record lows in North America.

"There were only 14 red wolves left in the world and only 12 of those bred. That's how close we came to losing the species forever," Morse said. "At the time, this was the first carnivore ever to be reintroduced after it had been declared extinct in the wild."

All the wolves in the world originated from the grey wolf in Asia thousands of years ago, Morse said, with the exception of the red wolf.

"Every wolf you've ever heard of -- the Arctic wolf, the Mexican wolf, timber wolf, the Iranian wolf – they're all some species of grey wolf. They all came from Asia. The only other surviving wolf in the world developed in North America, and that's the red wolf," Morse said. "At one time, they would have ranged from Maine, all the way down through the Ohio River and Mississippi River valleys, all the way out to the central portion of Texas."

In the 1970s, when it was determined that the red wolf was going extinct, the last place red wolves existed was on the border of Louisiana and Texas, near the Gulf Coast, according to Morse.

"About a million and a half acres, down in the bayous, was the last place the wolf existed. And the only reason it was there was because you couldn't get to it. It's very remote down there," Morse said.

The last red wolves were killed in North Carolina before the Declaration of Independence was signed, Morse said.

"We've got court records from surrounding areas written on parchment with a quill pen dating back to 1772-1773," Morse said. "There were bounties being offered on wolves and cougars. Around the same time, both species disappeared around the landscape in eastern North Carolina."

Sherry Samuels, Animal Department Director for the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science, said the government sponsored removal of the creatures.

"People tend to remove things they have concerns about rather than look first and see what the implications are," Samuels said.

Today, Samuels said "in the wild population, wolves are actually being killed from gunshots -- people are actually shooting them – and they are being hit by cars. In the captive population, the genetic bases are very limited and we have space issues. We can't just breed wolves if we don't have anywhere to put them."

Another reason red wolves nearly became extinct, Morse said, is because as a keystone species, they do not handle pressure well.

"As a top predator, they never developed a response to pressure – there's no reason a top predator would need some sort of biological response to pressure," Morse said. "They have no enemies other than humans, and unlike coyotes, you can get rid of wolves. We've gotten rid of wolves all over the world and all over the U.S."

In order to reestablish a population of red wolves, several programs have started in North Carolina. The National Wildlife Refuge Red Wolf Program first began at Alligator River Refuge in 1987. Morse said four pairs of wolves were reintroduced, and in 1992 four more pairs were reintroduced at another refuge.

"All those animals that were released, by default, were captive. They were extinct in the wild. Every animal we released was a captive animal, taken care of by humans, every day of their lives," Morse said.

Some of the wolves were not released because their genetic lines were more valuable, and the program did not want to take a chance of losing them forever, according to Morse.

There are two aspects to the recovery program – captive and wild. The captive aspect includes nearly 40 zoos and breeding facilities all over the United States, such as the North Carolina Zoo, that house and breed red wolves.

"The whole idea is that the genome, the bank, over time is crossed with the best chance of preserving the most genetic diversity for hundreds of years," Morse said. "In the wild, all the lines were not equally successful. The genetic makeup of the captive animals is more diverse than the genetic makeup of the wild population."

The North Carolina Museum of Life and Science currently has two wolves from the Alligator River National Wildlife Reserve. Samuels said the museum became a part of the Red Wolf Species Survival Program in 1992.

"The Red Wolf SSP is a group of captive institutions, lead nature centers, museums around the country that come together and work as a unit to have a recovery program caring for the wolves in captivity trying to breed them and maintain them and do whatever we can to assist with the wild population," Samuels said. "Each summer, there is a master plan review meeting where we look at all the wolves in captive population and decide, in terms of breeding and companionship, what wolves make a good genetic pair and who do we want to try and breed."

The two current wolves in the museum have been together for two breeding seasons but have not bred, Samuels said, so they are going to be split up to try and hopefully have them meet with a different wolf next year.

The increase of the red wolf population is important to Samuels because the wolves represent a bigger issue.

"If we take large predators away from our ecosystem, the rest of the ecosystem tends to fall apart," Samuels said. For example, "without red wolves the deer populations have gotten out of control."