The Red Wolf is the only wolf species native to the Eastern United States and a prime example of why the Endangered Species Act is so important. Learn about the recovery of these amazing carnivores with our experts Heather Clarkson and Ben Prater from our Southeast team.
Transcript:
It was last year that I saw my first Red Wolf. And it’s always special to see a wolf, especially your first wolf, but this one was it was even more special because it was 1849F, who we also call the matriarch. She was such a champion for her family, for her species. And I remember this moment driving down that bumpy dirt road in Alligator River. I was like what is that? What is that? Is that a deer? And then when I realized it was a wolf, like just the swelling of my chest and it was a magical moment. I – of course I cried. Of course.
The Red Wolf is an incredible species. In fact, it’s the only wolf entirely native to the eastern United States. It had a historical range as far north as New York, New Jersey, as far south as Florida, and as far west as Texas. Across that range, these animals played a key role as an apex predator in the forests, swamps and open lands. Like many predator species, Red Wolves faced significant persecution when settlers came to the continent, and this went on for hundreds of years, driving the populations of Red Wolves almost to extinction. Red Wolves were actually one of the first species to be listed under the Endangered Species Act, and through the Act, the Fish and Wildlife Service took bold action to actually rescue this species. A number of Red Wolves were captured in the sixties and seventies, brought into captivity. These species were under human care, where they worked to facilitate the breeding and the rebuilding of the population to really help sustain those genetics with the central goal of getting these wolves back on the landscape into their wild homes and wild spaces. And all of that was done through the mechanisms of the Endangered Species Act, the incredible commitment made by the federal agencies under that act to get this done and all the various private partners that came together for the science, for the stewardship under human care, to really give this species the chance it deserved. So without the Endangered Species Act, it’s unlikely we would still have Red Wolves with us today.
So in the early phases of the Red Wolf Recovery program, the population numbers were actually really strong and indicated that the recovery effort was really successful and doing really well. Unfortunately, due to political changes and some attitude changes, that population started to plummet. It was a mixture of gunshot mortality and vehicle mortality and other external factors in the environment that were making it really hard for the wolves to continue to reproduce in the way that they had been reproducing. So granted, we did get up over 100 wolves on the peninsula at one point, that number really did decrease down to under ten within a decade. And that was really, really scary and really brought us to a point where the wolves simply due to the tiny population size, were not going to be able to reproduce themselves out of that hole, which is when Defenders really stepped in and started pushing and pushing and pushing for more releases and to get more wolves back out in the environment to help fill that gap. Now we’re looking at anywhere from 10 to 20, and that still sounds like a really low number, but to us it’s progress.
So the vast majority of the work Defenders Of Wildlife has been doing over the past several years has been really focused on our legal advocacy, helping to make sure we get this program back on track. But in addition to that, we’re really focused on engaging directly with folks in the Red Wolf recovery area on the ground to help foster a real community of social tolerance, of coexistence, helping to guide and give landowners and others the tools they need to share the landscape with these animals.
This is a carnivore species that, right or wrong does make a lot of people uncomfortable. And if it were just left up to, to fate, if there wasn’t this mechanism on the books in law that made it so that we could move forward and recover them, you know, they wouldn’t be here. That’s the fact of the matter. They would not be here without that law. And I have so, so much love and respect for the Endangered Species Act because of so many species like the Red Wolf, that we really just wouldn’t even have the opportunity to recover if that law hadn’t been passed 50 years ago.
