Guest Commentary

To stimulate discussion and debate, Coastal Review welcomes differing viewpoints on topical coastal issues.

“They swam all the way to Ocracoke?”

I suppose I should not have been so incredulous upon learning that National Park Service employees were having to track down rogue coyotes on Ocracoke Island. During my time conducting surveys of colonial waterbirds across the North Carolina coast, the impacts of coyote predation on young chicks was impossible to not take seriously. Their presence posed a constant challenge for federal, state, and municipal authorities. It’s not only birds that are affected; coyotes, with their acute sense of smell, pose a serious threat to sea turtle nests as well.

Invasive species often pose a serious challenge for ecosystems that have not evolved alongside them, and the havoc they wreak often vastly outstrips the pace at which the environment can adapt to their presence. While we have come to think of coyotes as a part of our everyday lives here in the eastern U.S., they are actually only native to the Southwest.

As wolves were killed en masse and driven out of the eastern U.S., coyotes migrated eastward to fill in the ecological role that was left wide open. As they did so, they picked up genes from the retreating wolves along their way. Now native red wolves are restricted to the Albemarle peninsula of North Carolina, a remnant of a once-dominant population that would have kept the coyotes from ever reaching the barrier islands simply by virtue of their presence.

While red wolves and coyotes are somewhat similar in appearance, coyotes are solitary mesopredators (mid-level carnivores that are still threatened by apex predators) that are characteristically opportunistic when it comes to food sources such as sea turtle eggs. Red wolves on the other hand are cooperative pack hunters that go for much larger game than coyotes, and will drive coyotes away or attack them under normal ecological conditions.

I bring the expansion of coyotes up as one example of how North Carolina’s barrier islands have changed since the onset of European colonization in the 16th century. The changes have been numerous, catastrophic, profound, and formative all at the same time.

One of these changes are the wild horses that roam these dunes, in locations ranging from Corolla to Beaufort. I have enjoyed many meals from childhood to present dining on the Beaufort waterfront, looking across the narrow intracoastal waterway to find horses grazing on the Rachel Carson Reserve. For locals, they are a sight as ubiquitous as spotting dolphins in the waterway. Entire businesses and marketing promotions of the area have fixated on these horses as a unique part of the area’s culture and appeal.

I am presently a researcher with North Carolina State University studying the crystal skipper. The crystal skipper is a butterfly species only found on a 30-mile stretch of the North Carolina Crystal Coast from Bear Island to the Rachel Carson Reserve.

The Rachel Carson Reserve just so happens to be a location with resident horses, making it the only place where horse and skipper populations interact.

People frequently come to the Rachel Carson Reserve to hike or relax on the beach, whether they come by way of ferry or their own watercraft. As my coworkers and I work in our highlighter-yellow vests, visitors are frequently drawn to us with inquiries about where they can spot the horses. Their assumptions aren’t wrong, I have been coming here for years at this point and I can direct them where to go to have a good chance of seeing them. They are often surprised, however, to find us unenthusiastic about the horses when we are directly asked about them.

We usually address the visitors on the Rachel Carson Reserve surrounded by centipede grass, the only grass that remains after the horses have eaten their fill. Seaside little bluestem, the sole grass species the crystal skipper lays their eggs on and eats as a caterpillar, is nowhere to be found in the areas the horses frequent. It’s heart-wrenching to watch the horses stride into the one small section of the Rachel Carson Reserve that still contains a viable crystal skipper population, consuming who knows how many eggs and caterpillars as they satiate their hunger on seaside little bluestem. In a sharp contrast to the horses, the crystal skipper is not only from here, it is only found here.

Who are these horses for? For tourists?

I doubt the desire to see the horses would increase as people grow in their knowledge about the horses’ condition. When I am asked about how healthy the horses are here, I feel as though I am lying by omission if I don’t tell the truth as I see it.

For tourism boards?

North Carolina’s coast is replete with breathtaking sites and awe-inspiring nature, I doubt horses in particular are needed to promote the area.

For a rare and imperiled butterfly species found nowhere else on Earth?

Certainly not for them.

One could easily ask who the crystal skipper is for, to which I would reply that it is for the very island ecosystems that created it in the first place, whose selective pressures picked the genes that gave rise to its very body plan. Secondarily, the crystal skipper is for the people who live and visit here who are able to appreciate its beauty and intrinsic link to the land.

For all the problems I have highlighted here, I do believe that there is a solution to this problem that addresses the concerns of all involved. To anchor this solution in how I began the article, I once again want to return to the subject of Ocracoke.

Horses remain on the island but have been corralled into a pony pen, easily accessible to anybody visiting the island. These horses are given a proper diet, bereft of the hardy and sandy grasses that stitch the island together against the advances of the wind and waves. This keeps the island’s ecology and structure intact, enables visitors and residents alike to see this part of Ocracoke’s history, and keeps the horses protected from careless visitors.

It would be impertinent and wrong of me to dismiss the cultural and tourist value that the horses provide simply because I am approaching the topic as a conservationist. That said, if you are able to get a close look, the horses’ taught skin stretched over their hips and ribs represents a sharp contrast to the horses that folks are generally used to seeing.

If folks are going to come to see the Crystal Coast, I want them to see the best of the Crystal Coast, where we steward our ecological resources well and care for the animals in our charge.

Opinions expressed by the authors are not necessarily those of Coastal Review or our publisher, the North Carolina Coastal Federation.

A musical performance by the Raleigh Civic Symphony set for this weekend will share what organizers call a musical vision of conservation for the American red wolf and other threatened species.

Composer Stephanie Ann Boyd’s “Carnival of the Nearly Extinct Animals and other works focused on our relationship to the natural world” is at 4 p.m. Sunday in the North Carolina State University’s Stewart Theatre at 2610 Cates Ave. in Raleigh.

The performance is part of the university’s NC State LIVE season.

The concert, conducted by Peter Askim, will feature the world premiere of a new movement in “Carnival” honoring the endangered eastern red wolf population in northeastern North Carolina.

The performance will feature images of the remaining red wolves in North Carolina by wildlife photographer Aspen Stalls.

Organizers call the work, “a kaleidoscopic, aural presentation celebrating a menagerie of animals (including coral) faced with the dismaying possibility of being the very last of their kind; some have already ceased to exist except in memory. Leading with a powerful message, the work will also serve to delight, educate, and empower the audiences who meet it.”

Boyd said she had already chosen the animals to be features when Askim advised her that an important addition was needed.

“He said, ‘Well, Stephanie, we really need to talk about the red wolf.’ And he told me about it, and we, I don’t know. I mean, I spent most of the summer working on this piece and just crying because the subject matter is so difficult to parse through,” Boyd told Coastal Review Wednesday.

She said that telling difficult stories is a big part of what activism is in a way that connects, rather than other tactics that may not.

“There’s a lot of shaming and anger, and I understand that, but for me, the thing that I’m here to do is bring love and inspiration, because those are the highest sort of vibrations we can have in emotion, in our emotions.”

Boyd said that in working with NC State LIVE on a new, extra movement for the red wolves meant that she got to spend more time exploring bluegrass and other musical traditions important to North Carolina.

“And I’m just gobsmacked that this is all just actually happening,” said Boyd.

A preshow “info fair” is scheduled for 3 p.m. in the theatre lobby with students and organizations presenting about their work in wildlife conservation and sustainability.

After the performance, audiences are invited to stay for a conversation with composers Boyd and Ryan Lindveit, wildlife researcher Dr. Roland Kays and researchers exploring how creative expression can deepen public engagement with conservation and climate awareness. NC State Senior Vice Provost for University Interdisciplinary Programs Dr. Rob Dunn will moderate the discussion.

Tickets are $25-30, $10 for NC State students and $25 for faculty and staff and are available online or at the box office, the only authorized source. “Tickets obtained from unauthorized online sources may be stolen, counterfeit and/or extremely overpriced,” university officials warn.

EAST LAKE — Red wolf populations in northeastern North Carolina are still far from recovered, but there are optimistic signs that the highly endangered species now has a solid chance.

More wolves are breeding, more pups are surviving, coyote hybridization has been cut, and there are fewer mortalities from vehicle strikes and gunshots.

While still modest, those successes reflect increased community engagement and renewed commitment from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and its numerous partners.

“It’s kind of a small crew, but we’re really dedicated to what we’re doing here,” wildlife biologist Joe Madison, North Carolina program manager for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Red Wolf Recovery Program, said during a virtual meeting held Sept. 23 to provide updates on the program. “We want to make this work. We want to work with landowners to make this work. We don’t want to impose it.”

Madison said that only about half of the red wolves roam within Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge land. The population, as of August, according to Fish and Wildlife data, totals about 30 red wolves, including 18 collared adults as well as uncollared juvenile wolves and a few other adults. This population roams the designated recovery area, 1.7 million acres of public and private land in Hyde, Dare, Tyrrell, Washington and Beaufort counties. Red wolves have been seen in all five counties

It is the only known wild population in the world.

Red wolves had once ranged over wide swaths of the U.S. mainland, including much of the Gulf Coast and Southeast regions, but after years of overhunting and habitat loss, the animals were declared extinct in the wild and added to the Endangered Species List in 1967. Twenty years later, four pairs of captive wolves, offspring of wild stragglers captured earlier in Louisiana, were transferred to Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, headquartered in Dare County. Innovative management tactics led to steady population growth, reaching a height of about 120 red wolves by 2007.

In 2020, there were only about seven collared wolves.

But poor communication with landowners led to angry confrontations over wolves coming onto private lands, while coyote hunting regulations led to mistaken identities.  Political support and funding for the recovery program dropped precipitously, and more wolves were being shot, whether intentionally or by mistake. By 2015, proposals were introduced to drastically reduce or potentially eliminate the program. After a series of lawsuits by environmental groups, the recovery program was eventually restored.

As Red Wolf Recovery Program Coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Emily Weller has acknowledged, the agency had to change the way it operated.

“Reintroducing a large carnivore into the wild had never been done before, and the focus of this program in the beginning was almost entirely biological,” Weller said, according to minutes of a management update meeting in September 2024. “But the social aspects, the community engagement, and human dimension — those were the cracks in our program’s foundation.”

Now the concept of “collaborative conservation” is viewed as critical to the survival of the red wolf, she said recently. 

“We cannot recover this species on our own,” Weller said during this week’s virtual update. “Our work depends on a pretty complex network of organizations, agencies, communities and individuals.”

That network includes veterinarian care at North Carolina State University and local veterinarians, staff with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, and assistance from numerous nonprofit and nongovernment groups.

“The science tells us what’s possible,” Weller said. “But it’s the relationships, the trust, the collaboration, that really determine what’s achievable.”

The Fish and Wildlife Service also now works with “Prey for the Pack,” a habitat-improvement program that engages with private landowners in eastern North Carolina wolf recovery areas in mutually beneficial habitat programming.

The Red Wolf Recovery Program also works closely with 52 zoo and wildlife centers across the country as part of the Saving Animals From Extinction, or SAFE, program, an initiative of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which currently cares for 280 captive red wolves. Part of the program’s goal is to increase the SAFE population to 400.

“They are a critical piece of this program in that they support the establishment of wild populations in maintaining genetic diversity,” Weller said.

Much care goes into choosing captive wolves to transfer to the recovery program in hopes of future pairing, as well as deciding which pups to place into dens with similarly aged pups for wild mothers to adopt, Weller noted.

“We rely on universities and academia for research and data to guide and base our decisions, and we’re using it constantly to adapt our management,” she said. “And then we need close coordination and communication with local landowners and community members to understand and incorporate their concerns and hopes for their community, as they have the most direct bearing on conservation and recovery, since they are the ones that live with the red wolves.”

Weller said that, other than a period of time when spending was frozen or restricted, the current funding for the Red Wolf Recovery Program had not been reduced.

Ultimately, she said, success will be when red wolves can be delisted — when they don’t need human help to survive — which is expected to take about 50 years, if all goes as planned.

Criteria that meets that goal include measurable thresholds: three viable populations, distributed to maximize redundancy and protect from catastrophic loss; one population of at least 180 and two with a minimum of 280 wolves, each with high gene diversity. Populations must be stable or growing for a decade with minimal human help and have a 95% probability of persisting for 100 years.

And finally, there must be long-term commitment that the sustainable populations can be maintained into the foreseeable future without Endangered Species Act protections.

“Red wolf recovery is about far more than just saving the species,” Weller added. “It’s about restoring ecosystems or landscapes to their natural balanced state and creating healthier environments that benefit plants and wildlife, including game species, and people.”

Every December, the red wolf program issues a release strategy for the coming year, that sets out a plan of how many captive wolves to release into the wild population that will best enable genetic diversity and sustainable growth. Changing conditions will be considered in any necessary revisions.

“It is also important to recognize that the ability to execute many of the releases is highly dependent on numerous on-the-ground factors,” according to the 2024-25 plan. “These factors include, but are not limited to, the ability to successfully capture specific wild Red Wolves, the correct timing of birth, and size of wild ad captive litters, to allow for pup fostering, and the survival of individual wild Red Wolves included in the scenarios.

“Given the myriad of factors that influence the different scenarios, the Service’s actions described in this strategy require real-time flexibility and the ability to adapt to changing factors on the ground and situations; thus, they require management discretion in the field to maximize the chances of success.”

Madison said that the team depends on having that flexibility to make judgment calls and adjust management tactics. During the update meeting, he elaborated on numerous and highly complex strategies that go into pup fostering, proper wolf-human interactions and handling — as little as possible — and wolf feeding – frozen, wild, small mammals like rabbits, raccoons, nutria and fresh frozen roadkill, like deer — and matchmaking (wolves are picky and fickle, too).

But Madison seemed quite pleased with the improvements in pup population survival, an obviously critical component of species recovery.

The pup survival rate to one year is typically about 50%, he said, but after two complete litters didn’t make it in recent years,  the recovery team determined that the likely cause was canine distemper.

“So this year when these pups were in an acclimation pen, and they were five weeks old, we went in the pen, recaptured them, and we gave them their first round of vaccines,” Madison explained. “Also, we implanted them with abdominal transmitters so we would be able to track them after they were released.”

So far, so good, he said. A family group that was released into the wild in May seems to be thriving.

“We may go into the season with a great plan, but then, you know, stuff happens out there,” Madison said. “And we have to adjust and make do with the best we possibly can.”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced that it will host an online informational meeting later this month to update the public on the Red Wolf Recovery Program.

The information session set for 6 p.m. until 8 p.m. Sept. 23 will include the latest on revitalized recovery efforts for the species, the status of recovery efforts in the eastern North Carolina red wolf population area, coyote-management strategies and planning.

Fish and Wildlife said the meeting is part of its continuing efforts to increase engagement with communities and overall communication and transparency regarding red wolf recovery.

Register for the meeting.

You can also submit any questions you have about red wolves or the Red Wolf Recovery Program using the above link.

“We will use these questions to shape our presentation. You will also have a chance to submit questions during the meeting,” officials said in the announcement.

RALEIGH – Nearly 40 years after the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service launched an innovative program to save the eastern red wolf from extinction, a nonprofit conservation group is challenging the agency’s prior decision to not upgrade to a more protective management designation, despite its outsized importance to the species’ survival.

Arguments were heard Wednesday by U.S. District Court Judge Terrence Boyle for the Eastern District of North Carolina in a federal court case filed by the Center for Biological Diversity that contends the Wildlife Service acted unlawfully when it decided to continue classifying the critically endangered population of red wolves as “nonessential.”

“Judge Boyle is so engaged on this issue … that he’s really able to dig in at this extremely deep, detail-oriented level,” said Perrin de Jong, a senior attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, during an interview Thursday about the 90-minute hearing. 

Following listing the wolves in 1966 as “threatened with extinction” on what later became the Endangered Species Act, the Fish and Wildlife Service about 20 years later established an experimental “non-essential” population of wild red wolves. and released four pairs into Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern North Carolina.

It is the only known wild population of red wolves in the world.

The intensively managed recovery program had promising success until about 2010, when management was scaled back. That was before court actions restored much of the program.

The Center for Biological Diversity had petitioned the agency in 2016 to reclassify the red wolf population as essential. The petition was denied in January 2023.

“The service is violating its duty to consider the best available science and the facts that have taken place since 1986 that affect the survival of the red wolf in the wild,” de Jong told Coastal Review.

In a request for comment on the case, a spokesperson for the U.S. Interior Department responded in an email Thursday that the agency does not “provide comment on active litigation.”

Mortality by vehicle strikes and gunshots have been an increasing challenge to the wolves’ survival, de Jong said.

Changing the classification to “essential” would extend more protective measures for the animals, he said, including allowing another layer of protection with a critical habitat designation.

The conservation group also is asking the agency to change their enforcement code to match a 2018 court ruling by Boyle that banned property owners from shooting red wolves unless they were threatening animals or people.

“The science indicates that the greater protections will result in greater conservation success, and inversely, lower protections result in higher poaching pressure,” he said.

The Wildlife Service is not disputing the conservation group’s argument that the agency has the authority to change the essentiality determination, the legal term for the classification, he added. 

“You could describe it as, ‘We’re not going to revisit the essentiality determination, because we don’t have to.’”

Today, there are believed to be 18 known red wolves surviving in the program’s five-county recovery area, in addition to unconfirmed numbers of wolves and wolf pups that do not have collars and have been born or fostered in the wild this year.

Updated data on the Red Wolf Recovery Program was not available on the Fish and Wildlife Service website, but a spokesperson said the new data is expected to be posted in early August.

Part of a series about the effects federal budget and staff cuts and the cancellations of programs and services are having in coastal North Carolina.

MANTEO — In the six months since the chaotic and seemingly random cutting in the federal government began, a terrible uneasiness has descended on the northeast corner of North Carolina, where all of the state’s nine national wildlife refuges employ neighbors and family members who live in the rural communities in which they’re located.

At least 10 Coastal North Carolina National Wildlife Refuge Complex staff and five employees of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s regional Ecological Services office in Raleigh, so far, are believed to have voluntarily left their jobs, whether nudged by coercion or incentives.

With staff forbidden to speak with media, and ongoing legal challenges and limited public information creating uncertainty, no one appears to know what will happen to their refuges.

“I just found out we should be getting some staffing numbers from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the next couple of weeks,” Howard Phillips, the Southeastern representative for the National Wildlife Refuge Association, a nonprofit advocacy and support group for the refuges, told Coastal Review, citing informed but unofficial sources. “The dust seems to be settling a little and (the agency) is starting to get a handle on where they stand.”

But Phillips, who retired at the end of 2020 as manager of Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in Tyrrell County, says he fears that serious consequences are already baked into the refuges’ cake, no matter what the government decides to do. The lack of trust engendered by often abrupt, unexplained cuts of staff, research and budgets as well as the “crippling” brain drain of expertise, experience and local knowledge has only made the situation more problematic.

“Could the administration suddenly decide they want to hire everybody back and start doing conservation again?” he continued. “That would take at least six months, probably 12 months. They’d have to be trained.”

The stark reality, he added, is that without knowing the Trump administration’s timeline or goal in the current upheaval, it’s impossible to understand the long-term impacts and impractical to expect much to change, much less improve.

“I mean, they’ve just given no indication that they’re going to do anything that’s going to reverse the trend right now, which is down, down, down, down,” Phillips said.

An unnamed spokesperson from the agency’s public affairs office ignored Coastal Review’s request to authorize or facilitate a refuge staff interview, but responded to several questions about impacts on North Carolina’s wildlife refuges in a May 23 email.

“As part of the broader efforts led by the Department of the Interior under President Trump’s leadership, we are implementing necessary reforms to ensure fiscal responsibility, operational efficiency, and government accountability,” the spokesperson wrote. “While we do not comment on personnel matters, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service remains committed to fulfilling our mission of conserving fish, wildlife, and natural resources for the American people.” 

Refuges in the coastal complex encompass nearly a half-million acres of farmlands, swamp forests and pocosin peatlands, intersected by rivers, streams, canals, lakes and sounds within the nation’s second-largest estuarine system.

The nine refuges — Alligator River, Pea Island, Mackay Island, Currituck, Mattamuskeet, Pocosin Lakes, Cedar Island, Swan Quarter, Roanoke River — are stretched along vast swaths of geography in the coastal plain that provide habitat for unique species and globally important ecosystems.

For instance, the critically endangered wild red wolves, the only surviving in the world, roam within a five-county recovery area based out of Alligator River, descendants of Spanish mustangs range free in Currituck, and thousands of migratory birds and waterfowl passing along the Atlantic Flyway overwinter every year at Mattamuskeet and Pocosin Lakes.

Mattamuskeet, the state’s largest natural lake, is undergoing an innovative and intensive watershed restoration project many years in the planning. And Pocosin Lakes, named for the Native American term for “swamp on hill” because of its boggy peat soil, has been studied by Duke University researchers for its ability to remediate carbon pollution. The refuge has also nearly completed an extensive rewetting project to restore the ability of the pocosin peat to absorb carbon dioxide and resist wildfires.

Two major wildfires in and around the refuge in recent decades have burned deep in the ground for many weeks, spewing tons of carbon back into the environment, with one smoldering for six months before it was finally extinguished.

Therein lies the dilemma — and the risk — to the refuges: What happens when there’s no one available to take proper care of the refuges, and to even continue the conservation mission?

Pocosin Lakes, for instance, with the recent retirement of former manager Wendy Stanton, no longer has a refuge manager.

“You know, with Wendy gone now, I don’t know that there’s anybody left at Pocosin Lakes that really understands that hydrology restoration and how it works,” Phillips said.

But it’s more than the upper-level staff, said Bonnie Strawser, president of the Coastal Wildlife Refuge Society, a local nonprofit group that supports all of the eastern North Carolina refuges. It’s also the loss of staff that maintain buildings and trails, she said, as well as the biologists who monitor water and test soil.

Strawser, who retired in 2020 after 40 years with Fish and Wildlife as visitor services manager, said that the project leader for Coastal North Carolina National Wildlife Refuge Rebekah Martin has designated acting managers in each refuge, but that’s in addition to their regular jobs with the refuges.

Martin is based at the agency’s Roanoke Island headquarters but is not authorized to speak to reporters. According to a 2023 article on the coastal refuges website, Martin oversees about 400,000 acres of habitat with more than a dozen endangered or threatened species. At the time, it said, the complex had 35 employees and more than 400 volunteers.

“We are currently down to 10 staff, and this is regular O and M — operations and maintenance — funded by general funding, refuge funding,” Strawser said in a recent interview. “Now that does not include firefighters or law enforcement, because they are funded through different programs.”

Strawser said that there were no probationary employees in eastern North Carolina, so no one had been outright fired. Some staff who agreed to resign under one of the agency’s two rounds of the deferred resignation program, she said, were quickly shut down and put on administrative leave for varied periods of time while collecting their salaries.

Cuts in both the U.S. Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service will also hamper the agencies cooperative response to wildfires and disasters, including with the national interagency incident management teams. Strawser is a member of one of three teams in the southern area.

“I don’t know what in the world we’re going to do when fire season comes,” she said. “They stood down our team. It’s not going to be available, they said, at least until after July.”

As Strawser noted, a lot goes on behind the scenes to keep the refuges humming, including procedural processes to keep records and run programs, as well as have sponsors to maintain the “casual hire” personnel to respond to emergencies.

“But the Fish and Wildlife Service, because they lost so many people in the administrative positions, they don’t have anybody to handle the payments and the travel, so they can’t sponsor” for a team member, she said.

For the time being, the public many not notice much difference when they go to a refuge, Strawser said.

“The visitor centers are run by volunteers,” she said. “The public programs are conducted mostly by volunteers.” But there’s only three maintenance people for their nine national wildlife refuges.

“There’s been no talk of closing anything, but it’s just common sense there will problems if there’s nobody to grade the roads, if there’s nobody to do the mowing on the road shoulders, she said. “And if there’s no ‘daylighting’ of the roads, they’ll get overgrown, the sun won’t reach down, and the mud doesn’t dry out and the road is destabilized and before you know it, they’re not drivable.”

Mike Bryant, who was succeeded by Martin, had served as refuge manager for 20 years, from 1996 to 2016, and he witnessed decreasing support for the refuges from the federal government, he told Coastal Review in an interview. After retirement, he had also served as consultant for the National Wildlife Refuge Association, and was former president of the Coastal Wildlife Refuge Society. Although he said he keeps in touch, he is no longer directly involved with either group.

Since about 2010, Bryant said there has been a steady decline in staffing.

“You have refuges where there were multiple people, and with some of them, there’s just one person left, and so that’s part of the story,” he said. “So it had nothing to do with the past 60 or 90 days, whatever it is now.”

But it’s not just mandated reductions in staff that threaten the refuges, he said. The management challenge is also an aging workforce that may not be replaced.

“You got over half a million acres of National Wildlife Refuge in multiple counties, and spanning across North Carolina to the Virginia border, with all kinds of infrastructure and management mandates and no staff to get those mandates done,” Bryant said. “They’re just wondering, how are we going to meet our responsibilities if we’re the only ones left? It’s a morale buster.”

After being fully staffed around 2003, he said it seemed as if the Department of Interior stopped prioritizing conservation and Congress slowly began losing interest in supporting the refuges.

“The Fish and Wildlife budget has so many facets to it, so many other responsibilities under various laws, endangered species and ecological services and all these other entities within the agency, fisheries and all those things, are all important,” Bryant said. “But Congress was never convinced to budget specifically for operations and maintenance of national wildlife refuges.”

Meanwhile, scores of new refuges came on line in the last 25 years. And rather than hiring more personnel, more work was heaped on less staff.

“I was hired in 1996 to manage Alligator River and Pea Island,” Bryant said. “Two years later, when the manager left Mackey Island and Currituck refuges, the regional office called me and said, ‘Hey, we want you to manage those two.’ All of a sudden, I had four refuges.”

Two years later, he was told to hire and supervise a new manager at Pocosin Lakes. Then staff was reduced, forcing him to share staff between the refuges. Next, Roanoke River was added to his responsibilities — along with the 90-minute drive each way. During all those years, he was bumped up just one pay grade.

Bryant said he gets why people get frustrated with the inefficient, cumbersome aspects of the federal government. But he remembers back when the Clinton administration had reduced both staffing and regulations, and not only succeeded, but ended up with a balanced budget.

“We went through all of those things without ever feeling like the sky is falling,” he said. Rather than taking rational steps to achieve efficiency, the interest now seems more in “just destroying the government, constantly degrading it, and yes, crafting corruption.”

“There’s a few bad actors, no doubt, always, in every organization everywhere, no matter what the enterprise,” Bryant added. “There was a rational process to deal with bad employees, grounded in policy. And the policy was grounded in regulation, and the regulation was grounded in law.”

The first official unit of the National Wildlife Refuge System was Pelican Island in Florida, established for conservation in 1903 by President Theodore Roosevelt. Today there are 570 refuges and 30 wetland management districts on more than 150 million acres entrusted to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services and enjoyed by 69 million visitors.

Bryant is rooting for not just survival of the struggling refuge system, but its revival.

“I think we’ll recover,” he said. “I’m optimistic about that. But we’ll be deeply scarred.”

COLUMBIA — The only wild red wolves in the world have been thrown a lifeline for Christmas.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation has been awarded $25 million to construct wildlife crossings that can provide safe passage for the critically endangered species, the U.S. Federal Highway Administration announced Dec. 20.

Only 17 to 19 of the red wolves are believed to remain within the designated 1.7 million-acre recovery area made up of public and private lands in six northeastern North Carolina counties.

Despite renewed success in recent years under U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service management, the wolves’ survival has been threatened by numerous vehicle collisions on a main route to the Outer Banks, a popular beach resort area.

“Red wolves are one of the most endangered animals on the planet, and for the last four years, vehicle strikes have been their number one source of mortality,” Ron Sutherland, chief scientist at the nonprofit Wildlands Network, said in an email. “Building the first set of wildlife road crossing structures on US 64 through Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge is a vital step towards pulling the red wolves back away from the edge of extinction in the wild.”

Habitat loss and overhunting in the 20th century had decimated the population of red wolves, which had once roamed much of the Southeastern U.S. In 1980, the red wolf, which is a separate species than its cousins the gray wolf and Mexican wolf, was declared extinct in the wild under the Endangered Species Act.

Seven years later, four pairs of captive-bred red wolf pups, offspring of a few wild red wolves captured earlier in Louisiana, were released at Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge.

Through a series of innovative management techniques, the population of red wolves in the recovery area rebounded to as many as 120 or so. But after 2010, the program lost much of its political and public support, and management measures were scaled back.

As a result, the wild population crashed to as few as seven known red wolves, as well as 20 or more un-collared red wolves. Numerous lawsuits by nonprofit conservation groups resulted in restoration of the program by 2022 and successful reintroduction of pups into the wild. Sadly, vehicles deaths have undone much of the population’s recovery momentum.

The grant from the Wildlife Crossings Pilot Program will provide funds to build 11 wildlife underpasses of various sizes along sections of the highway through the refuge, according to a Dec. 20 press release from the Defenders of Wildlife.

“We know the benefits wildlife corridors can provide to species traversing our state’s roadways, and perhaps none are in more need of safe passage than Red Wolves,” Ben Prater, Defenders’ Southeast program director, said in the release. “In the face of environmental changes that are increasingly transforming and fragmenting the landscape, this funding comes at a critical time, when we have the opportunity to make our roadways safer for motorists and wildlife alike.”

As part of the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the five-year program included $350 million for grants awarded competitively to states, tribes and federal agencies, the release said.

For 2024, Federal Highways awarded $125 million for 16 grants to design and build new wildlife crossings around the country. NCDOT applied in September for funds to build crossings and associated fencing to guide animals to the crossings on a key stretch of U.S. 64 that for years has been a hotspot for Red Wolves, bears and other species being struck by vehicles. 

Construction of the wildlife passages will also be supported by $4 million in private donations raised by the Center for Biological Diversity, Wildlands’ Network and an anonymous donor.

NCDOT applied in September for funds to build crossings and associated fencing that would guide animals to the crossings. The agency is contributing more than $6 million in matching funds for the project. The Volgenau Foundation, the Felburn Foundation, and the Animal Welfare Institute also provided a total of $305,000.

“Marissa Cox and her team at NCDOT prepared an excellent proposal, with help from Joe Madison at US Fish and Wildlife Service and Travis Wilson at NC Wildlife Resources Commission,” said Nikki Robinson, North Carolina project manager at Wildlands Network. “We’re also really thankful that NCDOT Secretary Joey Hopkins gave this effort his strong and enlightened support.”

As Sutherland added, not only will the project save numerous other animals from vehicular demise, it will also spare many humans the injuries and damages inflicted by striking the creatures.

“The wildlife road crossings that will be built with funding from Federal Highways will benefit not just red wolves but all kinds of other wildlife too. US 64 cuts right through the top end of the immense and biologically diverse Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, and the combination of busy beach highway and high density of wildlife leads to carnage on the asphalt every year.”

As many as 22,000 collisions with large wildlife were reported annually between 2021-2023 in North Carolina, resulting in 20 human fatalities, 2,754 injuries and more than $200 million in damages.

Within the last five years, six red wolves have been struck and killed by vehicles on U.S. 64. A notably tragic loss happened in June 2024, when the death of a breeding male red wolf on the highway led to the deaths of his five young pups in the wild.

A daily roadkill survey conducted by Wildlands starting Aug. 1, 2024, counted to date more than 2,400 dead animals on U.S. 64, including bears, birds, bats, deer and, among others, more than 700 each of turtles and snakes and 600 frogs, Sutherland said.

A 2008-2011 study along U.S. 64, done for NCDOT by Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, determined that 890 black bears, which can exceed 600 pounds, crossed the road from March 2009 to March 2011 in the 147,432-acre Alligator River refuge. In addition, the study found 15 GPS-collared black bears crossed the highway 99 times over three years.

“Providing wildlife with safe passage under US 64 will save thousands and thousands of animal lives each year,” Sutherland said.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has confirmed that a litter of five endangered red wolf pups has died after their father was killed by a vehicle on U.S. Highway 64, leaving fewer than 20 of their species remaining in the wild.

The pups were the offspring of a 2-year-old female red wolf named Chance, otherwise designated 2413F, and her partner, 2444M and were born in the spring. The father was killed by a vehicle soon after the pups were born.

The highway runs through the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge. Five other red wolves have been killed by vehicles in the past 14 months. Pup survival is always a concern after the mortality of one of the breeding pair, particularly red wolves with their first litter, such as was the case with this pair, officials said.

“The tragic deaths of these five pups might have been prevented if we had wildlife crossings in red wolf country,” said Will Harlan, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s shocking to see how a single vehicle collision has ripple effects across the critically endangered wild red wolf population. Wildlife crossings can protect people and save red wolves from extinction, but we need to build them before it’s too late.”

The organization noted how red wolves are monogamous and mate for life, and both parents participate in caring for their pups. “After the death of her partner, Chance was likely unable to feed and care for her pups by herself as a first-time, single mother,” the group said.

The group has also called for wildlife crossings to be built along Highway 64, which it said would benefit more than two dozen other species, including black bears, bobcats, spotted turtles and river otters.

“The crossings also protect human lives. Wildlife collisions kill more than 200 people in the United States every year and cause $10 billion in damages. Wildlife crossings have been shown to reduce vehicle collisions by 97%. Crossings along Highway 64 would safeguard animals and an increasing number of motorists traveling to and from the Outer Banks,” according to the group.

In a campaign to build wildlife crossings along U.S. 64, an anonymous donor pledged a $2 million match. More than $1 million has been raised. The wildlife crossing fundraising deadline has been extended to Oct. 31. Donations to the matching fund can be made at SaveRedWolves.org.

On Aug. 1, with funding from Defenders of Wildlife and Animal Welfare Institute, the Wildlands Network launched a roadkill monitoring survey on U.S. 64. During the first month of surveys, more than 1,300 dead vertebrate animals were documented between Columbia and Manns Harbor, along with about 6 miles of U.S. Highway 264 south from the U.S. 64 junction. The group said the total included nearly 300 frogs, more than 400 snakes and about 500 turtles, in addition to a dead bear, bobcat, and mink.

“Building wildlife road crossings and fencing (to guide the animals to the crossings) on US 64 would help prevent this incredible carnage and help save the red wolf from extinction in the wild, in addition to boosting public safety as well (no one wants to hit a 600-lb black bear on the way to their beach vacation!),” said Dr. Ron Sutherland, chief scientist with the Wildlands Network.

The Fish and Wildlife Service estimates the current red wolf population at 17-19.

Second of two parts. Read Part 1.

EAST LAKE — Before guardrails were installed about 20 years ago along U.S. Highways 64 and 264 in rural northeastern North Carolina, residents avoided driving at night in fear of striking a large animal and then sliding unseen into the abyss of a roadside canal.

Even now, with the barriers in place, locals know to drive with caution through the dark wilds of Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, scanning the edge of the forest for glowing eyes or sudden movements of creatures on night hunts — raccoon, possum, bobcat, fox, bear, deer, coyotes and red wolves.

Vehicle strikes are a serious hazard to humans and animals, but they can be especially devastating to the recovery of the endangered wolves that number only about 22 in the wild, 18 of which are collared and within the 1.7-million-acre management area encompassing public and private land in Beaufort, Dare, Hyde, Tyrrell and Washington counties.

When a wild red wolf is killed, the loss can destroy the cohesion of a pack, creating a negative impact on reproduction that is so critical to the species’ survival.

Last year, for example, in two separate instances, wolves from the same pack were struck and killed on U.S. 64, said wildlife biologist Joe Madison, manager for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Red Wolf Recovery Program.

Madison told Coastal Review that one of the males and one of the pups were killed. “So that family group kind of got messed up, and we ended up capturing and placing the female for that family group back in captivity.”

With the loss of her mate, Madison explained, the female had started wandering to a different area and creating issues, such as getting into chickens that made her no longer suitable for the wild. “But it was going well until that mortality of the male and one of the pups, and then it kind of went downhill from there.”

After years of study in the early 2000s, the North Carolina Department of Transportation had developed plans to construct numerous wildlife crossings along U.S. 64 in Dare and Tyrrell counties as part of a proposed 27.3-mile-long road widening and bridge-replacement project. The department has since dropped the widening project, but $110 million provided recently by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law allowed NCDOT to replace the 60-year-old Lindsey C. Warren Bridge over Alligator River. That $270 million project, which began this spring, will include wildlife crossings and under-road tie-ins at both ends of the bridge.

But it’s not enough, conservation groups say. Granted, more wildlife crossings would be costly to build in Alligator River’s swampy land, but considering the enormous investment that’s been put into the life of each red wolf in the interest of restoration of a unique species, these groups contend they’re worth it.

“That’s why one of the things we’re stressing this year is trying to make progress on getting (assistance from) NCDOT, who’s making great strides in the wildlife road crossings department,” Ron Sutherland, chief scientist at the nonprofit Wildlands Network, told Coastal Review recently. “We want them to try to put in for federal grants to build wildlife crossings and fencing on 64 through the refuge in particular.”

Sutherland had connected with an anonymous donor who recently pledged $2 million in matching funds for a grant to fund wildlife crossings in the refuge to protect red wolves, and the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity stepped in to help raise the match, he said in recent email.

“I’m working directly with NCDOT to try to bring a big proposal for U.S. 64 to Federal Highways, which can only happen if we have enough nonfederal matching funds to work with, he said, adding that the state would have to provide a 20% match to the Federal Highway Administration money.

Although the costs versus benefit of keeping red wolves away from vehicle tires is clear, he said, wildlife crossings through a refuge teeming with wildlife would provide plenty of benefits to every creature dashing, hopping, galumphing, scurrying, slithering or crawling across the highway.

“That stretch of Highway 64 through the refuge and through the Alligator River game lands, it’s got to be up there in terms of national priorities for reducing roadkill in terms of the sheer numbers of wildlife,” Sutherland said. “There were like tens of thousands of dead animals that they recorded in the DOT-funded study. And so it’s definitely not just the wolves, but bears and deer and bobcats and so many turtles, so many snakes … that I’ve seen dead on that road. Nobody wants to see that.”

According to the draft environmental impact statement for the then-proposed widening project, 36% of all crashes and 77% of night crashes on the two-lane road were because of animals. Five crashes occurred within a milelong stretch in Tyrrell County about a mile west of the bridge.

Between July 1996 to June 1999, the fatal crash rate for the project area was 4.13 crashes per 100 motor vehicle miles. After the guardrails were installed along the canals on U.S. 64, the fatal crash rate went down to 1.02 per 100 miles.

The proposed widening had called for about 11 overpasses or underpasses and dozens of smaller structures for amphibians, reptiles and small mammals. Four wildlife crossings that were installed decades ago off U.S. 64 between Columbia and Plymouth had been shown to be about 90% effective, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist had said in 2013. Designed with 6- to 8-foot-high fences at the road edge and both sides of the opening, the fence corrals animals toward underpasses, culverts or a bridge.

Travis Wilson, a biologist with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission Habitat Conservation Division, said that the east and west sides of the proposed 3.2-mile Alligator River bridge replacement will be lengthened to accommodate culverts for fencing and wildlife passage.

Based on his years of monitoring the commission’s wildlife crossings, Wilson said he expects that all species will use the passages, although white-tailed deer tend to be more skittish.

“I have documented most every large mammal, medium-sized mammal, in North Carolina using culverts fairly frequently, from black bear to coyotes, on down,” he told Coastal Review.

If funding is found for additional crossings beyond the bridge, he said they would be designed in different sizes for different species. Vegetation at the crossings, and the fencing would need to be maintained, and some areas in front of passages would need a timber pole “bridge” over a canal.

“That’s really what the crossings are there for,” he said.  “It’s not for a single species — it’s to reduce wildlife mortality by vehicles … to make the highway more permeable to all wildlife.”

While the recovery team would welcome wildlife crossings, the staff’s focus will remain on keeping wild-born and captive-bred wolves who have been introduced into the wild away from any human interactions and activity whatsoever. The less habituated wolves are to humans, the better for both species. The staff also takes pains to minimize contact as much as possible, Madison said, and when handling is necessary, it is done as gently as possible, with voices low and no petting.

In addition to using a hand-held antenna to keep track of the collared wolves, which wear lightweight GPS devices on reflective collars, or for some, smaller VHF radio devices, there are more than 55 remote sensing cameras to see who is where and when.

GPS collars, which cost about $2,000 and weigh 1.3 pounds, cannot exceed 4% of the animal’s body weight. The VHF collars are lighter but don’t send points from satellites.

A red wolf known as No. 2191 was recently sighted in the Milltail area of the Alligator River refuge. Madison said that the young male’s fear of people gives him a better chance to avoid becoming one of the unfortunate number of casualties suffered by red wolves from too-close encounters with people.

Madison held a small radio telemetry antenna during a visit to the Milltail area in late April. A steady beep revealed that the wolf — or more specifically his GPS collar — was close but too far away to see without field glasses. The wolf was born at Wolf Haven International in Washington state, one of the 50 zoological institutions and wildlife centers that participate in the captive-breeding program that is critical to repopulating the species in the wild.

When 2191 — the animals purposely are not named — was deemed ready for life in the wild, he was transferred to Alligator River.

“They did an excellent job,” Madison said, referring to Wolf Haven, “because he wants nothing to do with people.”

After his arrival, 2191 was placed in an acclimation pen before being released on Jan. 29 to meet a female who had come into heat, “in the hopes that they could become a pair,” said Madison.

The good news is that it appears that the handsome wolf is the father of a litter of eight pups born in the refuge in May. It’s the third year in a row that the Milltail pack has produced a litter, and this was the first sired by 2191. The previous breeding male that had sired two litters was killed by a vehicle last year.

Madison said he understands why zoos and conservation centers name the wolves, but it’s against the recovery team policy. The studbook number that is assigned to each animal identifies them in sequence that is vital management information.

American red wolves once had an enormous range in the Southeast and along the Gulf Coast. But because of habitat loss and hunting, the population collapsed. The red wolf was listed as endangered in 1973 and declared extinct in the wild in 1980. In 1987, four pairs of captive-bred wolves were released at Alligator River refuge.

Innovative management practices, such as pup fostering and coyote sterilization programs, grew the population, and by 2010, there were about 130 red wolves in the wild. But politics and funding shortages led to management cuts, and the population plummeted to seven before a federal judge ordered the program to resume in 2021.

Starting over has had its challenges. When 11 captive-born wolves were released in 2022, three wound up dead from gunshots and five were killed by vehicles. In the last year alone, four wolves have been killed by vehicles.

Still, the new litters provide hope, and the restored pup fostering practice — where a captive-born pup is slipped into a wolf den with a litter of pups about the same age — has been successful. So has the renewed coyote sterilization program, which allows hormonally-intact coyotes to hold territory, keep out fertile coyotes and prevent hybrids.

From November until March, the recovery team is kept busy doing captures to collar older pups, perform health check on the mature wolves and sterilize coyotes. There are 16 pens in the Sandy Ridge area, each double-fenced, but only 13 are currently usable. Interns and other staff enter the pen to water and feed the wolves and check on them. At that point, the wolves either go to the farthest distance and pace, or they go to their den box. The never try to escape.

“They don’t want to come near you,” Madison said. “They’re very nonaggressive.”

The pens are especially useful in letting wild wolves visit the captive wolves and start making friends. Recovery staff can watch with the remote-sensing cameras for signs that courtship may be blooming. Once they’re let free, all bets are off.

“We’ve had bonded pairs that came from captivity,” Madison recalled. “They were bonded in captivity, had had previous litters together, they had a litter in the pen, and they still left each other when we opened it up. It was like, ‘Now that I have options, you ain’t it!’”

Sutherland said that he is encouraged that the red wolf population is rebounding and that wildlife crossings are a critical component in its recovery. Healthy numbers of red wolf packs also would go far in pushing out a lot of the opportunistic coyotes and raccoons that swooped into vacated wolf territories, he said.

As they’ve done out west, he said, wolves can keep other species in check not just by eating them, but also by creating a climate of fear that works for the good of the entire ecosystem.

“So that’s the value of having the wolves back,” he said. “Not only are they the only thing that seems to control coyotes, but they also do kill the raccoons and we think that’s important from the standpoint of bird populations.”

“The red wolf was a success story of the Endangered Species Act, and it’s been saved from extinction,” Sutherland said. Now the question is whether the program can rebuild, without the apex predator being plowed down on a strip of asphalt.

Note: Coastal Review will not publish Wednesday in observance of Juneteenth National Independence Day, a federal holiday.

First of two parts.

EAST LAKE — From a half-mile away, the red wolf was a blur on the flat farmland within Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge. Through binoculars, the young male was strikingly muscular, striding with confidence on the dirt access road, seemingly unperturbed by the spying humans.

“He’s a big guy — yeah, he’s close to 80 pounds,” said Joe Madison, manager for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Red Wolf Recovery Program, while peering through his field glasses in late April from the cab of his truck. “If we got closer, he’d definitely start running, but I don’t want to do that.”

Madison, a wildlife biologist who has had earlier stints with grizzly bear and gray wolf management, is keenly focused on conservation and protection of the only wild red wolves in the world. He knows that the wolves’ instinctual fear of people is critical to their survival. The two biggest contributors to wild red wolf mortalities are directly related to interactions with humans: The first is intentional killing by gunshot or poisoning, the second is vehicle strikes.

After establishing cooperative programs with landowners and others in the community to prevent wolf shootings, officials with the refuge are now working with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission and the North Carolina Department of Transportation on constructing wildlife crossings at both ends of the planned replacement bridge over the Alligator River on U.S. Highway 64 between Tyrrell and Dare counties.

The hope is that, beyond the bridge project, funding also will be available to build numerous crossings along U.S. 64, said Travis Wilson, a biologist with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission Habitat Conservation Division.

“It’s kind of a standalone discussion on wildlife improvements in highway permeability improvements,” Wilson told Coastal Review. “It’s outside the scope of a highway project.”

The Center for Biological Diversity announced last week that an anonymous donor had pledged a $2 million match of other donations toward wildlife crossings across U.S. 64, which bisects the Alligator River and Pocosin Lakes wildlife refuges. If the additional $2 million can be raised by the nonprofit center and its supporters by the target date of Aug. 1, it could leverage an additional $16 million in federal funds.

Funding for $350 million in grants was provided in the Wildlife Crossings Program, established in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

A million wildlife-vehicle collisions occur in the U.S. annually, costing more than $8 billion and resulting in thousands of injuries and hundreds of fatalities, according to the Federal Highway Administration website.

A second round of Highway Administration discretionary grants will be opened this summer under the Wildlife Crossing Pilot Program with the stated mission of reducing wildlife-vehicle collisions while improving habitat connectivity for terrestrial and aquatic species.

Marissa Cox, the Western Regional Team lead with NCDOT’s Environmental Policy Unit, said that her team intends to apply for a grant, but it does not know yet what the total cost of the project would be. NCDOT is using information from the proposed — and since dropped — U.S. 64 widening project design plans to try to estimate costs for the structures, she said in an interview.

“It’s very competitive, and there’s not a lot of funding,” Cox said about the grant program.

During the first round, she recalled, the amount of project applications far exceeded the available funds.

Although Cox said there are about 26 wildlife crossings in North Carolina, Wilson said that when standalone structures are included, there are “dozens and dozens” of crossings.

As part of a wildlife stewardship memorandum of understanding signed in March 2023 with Wildlife Resources, NCDOT is currently compiling information and Global Positioning System data on all the crossings that it has committed to, designed and constructed, she said. The agencies are also finalizing a joint Wildlife Crossing Guidance document to be made available online.

With U.S. 64 and other less-traveled highways cutting through the 1.7 million-acre management area encompassing public and private land in Beaufort, Dare, Hyde, Tyrrell and Washington counties, the wildlife crossings could benefit not only the survival of the red wolves, but also the taxpayer who is supporting the recovery program.

A recently updated red wolf management plan estimated costs of $328 million over 50 years, and that does not include the millions spent over the decades since the wolf conservation program began.

The red wolf had once roamed much of the Southeast, but overhunting and habitat loss decimated its population. In 1973, the species was listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. Fish and Wildlife, the agency charged with implementing the Endangered Species Act, first listed the red wolf as endangered in 1967, and it was declared extinct in the wild in 1980.

As part of an effort in 1987 to restore the species in the wild, four pairs of captive-bred red wolf pups, offspring of the few remaining from the wild population captured earlier in Louisiana, were released at Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge.

After a series of setbacks beginning around 2010 — with the wild population plummeting from as much as 130 to seven — the recovery program has been renewed and reinvigorated since 2022.

Currently, there are 18 known and collared red wolves and a total of about 20 to 22 wolves in the wild and 263 in the captive-breeding population.

Wildlife crossings have been studied, planned and – sometimes – built along roadways in northeastern North Carolina, but in coming years they are to be a more significant part of the focus on conservation of the fragile population.

“Wildlife crossings along one of North Carolina’s most dangerous highways are crucial to protecting the world’s most endangered wolf,” stated Will Harlan, southeast director the Center for Biological Diversity.

In a study done for NCDOT by the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and completed in 2011, hair samples caught on a barbed fence were from 890 black bear crossings from March 2009 to March 2011 in the 147,432-acre Alligator River Refuge. The Virginia Tech study also found that 15 GPS-collared bears crossed the highway 99 times. In addition, 170 white-tailed deer, 200 bobcats and raccoons, and an additional 260 bear were caught on camera.

Surveys of roadkill from November 2008 to July 2011 showed eight deer killed. Between January 1993 and July 2011, factoring in historical data, there were 63 bear, 75 bats, 82 small mammals, 134 mid-sized mammals, 1,153 birds, 4,014 reptiles and 7,498 amphibians killed on the road. And in 2012, refuge biologists reported that 11 bear were hit by vehicles, not including those who ran off into the woods after being struck.

Data from the Virginia Tech study will be used to guide project estimates for crossings through the refuge, Cox said.

The Fish and Wildlife Service, in its February red wolf recovery program five-year status review, said that between 1987 and 2013, vehicle-wildlife collisions resulted in 34% of all mortalities related to humans; and there were 11 vehicle-related mortalities between 2019 and 2023.

“This mortality level would be expected to increase as habitat becomes more fragmented by roads and with increasing human traffic that would be expected with increased development,” the report said. “Additionally, this threat would also likely increase with increases in the population size of red wolf.”

Madison said that there is now orange reflective material on the GPS collars placed on the wild wolves to increase their visibility at night. There are also roadside mobile electronic message signs to warn drivers on all the highways.

Any wildlife crossings that are proposed separately from an NCDOT project, which would absorb some of the costs, will “not be inexpensive,” Wilson said.

“We have been successful in putting underpasses in coastal North Carolina in various places,” he said. Swampy Alligator River, with its numerous roadside canals, “has its own unique features and soil conditions,” Wilson said.

“That’s a big part of the conversation, building in the soil types that are out there, the fill and the engineering that have to go in place there. And as you know, anything that becomes more complex, the dollar figures begin to increase with that complexity,” he said.

“When it comes to the mammals that we’re talking about, if your structure is designed correctly and located correctly, and you have appropriate fencing, then you’re going to have mammals find those crossings and use those crossings,” he said. “And once they start, they’ll keep using them.”

The crossings provide habitat connectivity, as Wilson explained it.

After the New York Times recently published an article about wildlife crossings that included video of wildlife using an overpass, public interest in wildlife passages nationally increased dramatically.

“My phone blew up with reporters and the public wondering when is North Carolina going to do these things. And it felt like I spent a year on the phone every other day explaining to people that North Carolina has been doing it for two decades,” Wilson said. “The documents are memorializing a lot of what we’ve done but also will be good tools to give to people who have interest.”

Next in the series: Wildlife crossings dovetail with red wolf conservation science.

Endangered Species Day, celebrated the third Friday in May, recognizes gains in protecting endangered species and also is a call to conservation action.

To share the research on endangered species taking place at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, its researchers plan to discuss their work on red wolves, right whales, jaguars, black rhinos and black-footed ferrets.

The series of short presentations is scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. Friday, which is Endangered Species Day, in the museum’s SECU Daily Planet Theater and will be livestreamed on YouTube.

Dr. Roland Kays is head of the Biodiversity Research Lab at the museum, studies mammals and also teaches conservation at N.C. State University. He plans to present the findings of his study on eastern North Carolina’s endangered red wolf population.

Once common throughout the region, the intensive predator control programs and the degradation and alteration of their habitat in the early 20th century destroyed the red wolf populations, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Now the most endangered wolf in the world, the species was designated as threatened with extinction under the Endangered Species Preservation Act in 1967, when the service said it initiated efforts to conserve and recover the species.

“Today, about 15 to 17 red wolves roam their native habitats in eastern North Carolina as a nonessential experimental population, and approximately 241 red wolves are maintained in 45 captive breeding facilities throughout the United States,” the service states on its website.

Kays told Coastal Review that he is working on a project on the red wolves in eastern North Carolina, “where we evaluated their effect on the ecosystem by comparing how common other species of mammals were before and after the wolf population crashed.”

He said they found that most species increased in numbers when the red wolves declined, including competitors such as bears and bobcats, as well as prey including raccoons, deer and turkey. 

“This shows how important it is to have apex predators on the landscape,” Kays continued. “Since our study the wolves have increased a little bit, starting having litters again, and have also been supplemented by additional captive releases.”

Hopefully they can not only survive but even thrive, to help maintain a balanced ecosystem in eastern North Carolina, he added.

Others to join Kays in the special presentation Friday include the following:

• Dr. Elizabeth Kierepka, senior research biologist with the museum and N.C. State.
• Dr. Mike Cove, research curator of mammalogy mammals and research associate at Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute.
• Lisa Gatens, collections manager of mammalogy.
• Dr. Alex Jensen, postdoctoral researcher in the museum’s Biodiversity Research Lab.

Officials say a 2-year-old wild male red wolf was killed April 15 by a vehicle strike on U.S. Highway 64 in the East Lake area of Dare County.

This is the fourth death of an endangered eastern red wolf in the past 10 months, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service referred to the wolf as No. 2410, born in the Milltail pack in 2022, but the Center for Biological Diversity said its name was Muppet. The Milltail Pack, one of only two families of red wolves in the wild, is composed of a breeding male and female and nine surviving offspring.

The service said necropsy results were pending, but that prior to its death, monitoring indicated the wolf had been crossing the highway in the area and efforts were ongoing to haze him away from the highway and to capture or relocate him.

The Center for Biological Diversity noted that Muppet’s father also was killed by a vehicle strike six months earlier along the same stretch of U.S. 64, which runs through Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in North Carolina.

“Muppet’s tragic death brings North Carolina’s beleaguered red wolves one step closer to extinction,” said Will Harlen, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The world’s most endangered wolves should not be roadkill, especially when we know that building wildlife crossings could save them from being hit by vehicles. We owe it to Muppet and his family to give red wolves a fighting chance.”

Fewer than 20 red wolves remain in the wild, making them the most endangered wolves on the planet. Vehicle strikes are the second leading cause of mortality for red wolves.

The center said Muppet was named for his long, thick neck and was the first-born and of his pack’s juvenile wolves. The organization said that Muppet had stepped up to fill in its father’s role, helping protect the younger pups and its mother.

The organization said wildlife crossings could benefit red wolves and other species at the Alligator River and Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuges, including river otters, bobcats and black bears.

“Wildlife crossings also protect human lives. Wildlife collisions kill more than 200 people in the U.S. every year and cause $10 billion in damages. North Carolina is considered by insurance companies to be a high-risk state for wildlife collisions, and 7% of all vehicle crashes statewide involve animal strikes,” the group said.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law authorized $350 million in federal funds to support wildlife crossings nationally. A coalition of 15 national and regional organizations is requesting $10 million in funds from the North Carolina legislature to fund wildlife crossings across the state, including crossings along Highway 64 in red wolf territory.

“To stop cars from killing these desperately endangered animals, we need to create wildlife crossings in their last refuges,” Harlan said. “Wildlife crossings can protect human lives and save red wolves from extinction.”

COLUMBIA — Whether red wolves will end up thriving in the wild is still a conservation conundrum, but now the critically endangered species is officially back in the game.

Wildlife conservation groups announced Wednesday a court settlement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that ensures continuation of successful management strategies and public engagement to restore the world’s only population of wild red wolves in northeastern North Carolina.

“These wolves and other endangered species across the South are a living testament to the fragile balance of our ecosystems and a symbol of the urgent need for conservation,” Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Ramona McGee and the group’s leader of its wildlife program, said in a prepared statement.

The agreement settles a 2020 lawsuit filed against the Wildlife Service in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina by the law center on behalf of the Red Wolf Coalition, Defenders of Wildlife and the Animal Welfare Institute, contending the agency had violated provisions of the Endangered Species Act in its red wolf management.

In acknowledging the importance of the Eastern North Carolina red wolf population to the conservation and recovery of the species, the Wildlife Service confirmed in the seven-page settlement its commitment to manage the population “in a manner consistent with the ESA.”

In order to comply, the agency agreed to implement adaptive management strategies that include coyote sterilization and programs to release captive wolves and foster captive wolf pups into the wild population. Public engagement would be increased with stakeholders and property owners within the 1.7 million-acre recovery area that spans public and private land in Beaufort, Dare, Tyrrell, Hyde, and Washington counties.

“For more than 30 years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and its partners have worked to conserve and recover the red wolf,” the agency said in a prepared statement, adding that increased transparency is a focus of improved communication. “The Service has been undertaking a concerted effort to reengage with the local community of eastern North Carolina regarding red wolf management and recovery. The success of the Eastern North Carolina Red Wolf Population sets the stage for the Service’s ability to fulfill our responsibility to recover the species – which we cannot do without the local community and our conservation partners.”

The settlement requires the Wildlife Service to continue the specified conservation strategies for eight years, but makes no mention of actions beyond that period.

Although McGee declined in an interview to go into how terms of the settlement were reached, or details of the negotiations, she said that Fish and Wildlife may choose to continue to publish release plans, or take another approach.

“Eight years is a long time — it’s roughly two generations of red wolves,” she said. “That will go a long way in getting the red wolf on the right path.”

As one of the earliest listings on the brand-new Endangered Species Act in 1973, the red wolf has been on a conservation roller coaster from the beginning.

By the time the canid was listed as endangered, its once-expansion population in the Southeastern U.S. had been depleted by loss of habitat and overhunting to a handful wandering in an isolated area of Louisiana. Not long after, the red wolf was declared extinct in the wild. But in 1987, four pairs of captive-bred offspring of wild wolves from captures in Louisiana were transferred by Fish and Wildlife to the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in Manteo, and the animals were designated as “nonessential experimental population of wild red wolves.”

Through innovative conservation strategies, the population increased steadily to as many as 130 by 2015, leading to confidence that the species had a chance to recover. But at the same time, political support and public anger over species conflicts turned against the wolves, and conservation efforts declined while mortality from vehicle strikes, poisonings and gunshots increased. Before releases of captive wolves into the recovery area resumed after the Southern Environmental Law Center filed suit in 2020, the known red wolf population had been reduced to as few as seven, with only a total of 20 or so wild red wolves remaining in North Carolina.

Fish and Wildlife announced in February 2022 that it would restore the prior effective management tactics and work with community members to protect red wolves so the animals can co-exist safely on the land.

Since 2021, 20 captive adults and sub-adults were released, three were transferred from the St. Vincent National Wildlife Refuge, a barrier island area where paired red wolves can roam free and breed, and five captive-bred pups were fostered by wild wolf mothers with newborn litters.

Emily Weller, the agency’s red wolf program coordinator, said that the current known population of wolves — those wearing a digital collar — in the recovery area is 13, with an estimated total population of 23 to 25 wolves in the wild. Those numbers take into account recent mortalities, including one found dead May 18 in Washington County with a gunshot wound in its torso, and a female found dead on July 20; but also pups born in the wild or captive-bred pups snuck into newborn litters.

There are also a total of 26 sterilized coyotes within the Eastern North Carolina red wolf population, Weller said. One of the successful management techniques is to sterilize coyotes, but leave them hormonally intact. When they’re released, they continue to instinctively hold territory, but they can’t breed with the wolves. The result is they serve as placeholders, while limiting the number of coyotes. Also, captured hybrids are euthanized to limit interbreeding. 

Of a number of red wolves released into the recovery area in the spring, some adjusted well, including a a captive-born family group comprised of a breeding pair and a yearling, Weller said in an interview. But unfortunately, a breeding male and a pup from that group have since died, she said, adding that the causes were still under investigation. Also, one of the captive-bred males that were released had to be recaptured and removed because of persistent visits to populated areas.

The settlement calls for the agency to submit a release plan every Dec. 1 for the next eight years. The final red wolf recovery plan is expected to be completed by late September 2023, the Weller said. That plan will incorporate the findings of the Population Viability Analysis, a draft of which is currently under review. Both plans will include details of what needs to happen for the species to recover, what they would look like, and what actions are required.

Although Weller said the specifics won’t be available until the plans are released, she said that the draft recovery plan estimated that recovery of the red wolf species could be reached in 50 years. Once the recovery plan is completed, she added, the agency will start working on the recovery implementation strategy, which will be a flexible plan that addresses the on-the-ground work and action needed to carry out recovery efforts.

Weller said that communication with community members and property owners is an important component of the success of the recovery program. To that end, earlier this year the agency signed a three-year contract with Francine Madden of Conservation Conflict, LLC., who will assist with transforming destructive energy in conflict to collaboration and progress.

“I think it’s going to help us engage better with the community and stakeholders, and help us build a better working relationship,” she said.

At a public information held in May, Weller said that increased population numbers depend on genetic diversity and decreased threats to the both captive and wild wolves. But true success will be evident when the red wolves don’t just need people not to hurt them, but also don’t need people to help them.

“For red wolf populations to ultimately be viable or successful, they must not be reliant on extensive human interventions, which we define as annual or frequent releases, fostering, translocations, and placeholder management,” she said at the meeting.

And the conservation effort must be collaborative.

“For any species, but particularly this one, effective recovery will require participation and involvement of all parties,” Weller said.

This report has been corrected to note that only one of the released captive-born male wolves had to be removed, rather than two as originally reported.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials are asking the public for information in the investigation of the killing of a federally protected red wolf in Washington County.

Officials announced this week that the red wolf, or Canis rufus, was found dead along a fence line south of Newland Road on May 18. They said the red wolf was shot in the torso, causing the animal to falter and fall where it was ultimately found. A recent necropsy found the red wolf’s lungs were collapsed.

The Fish and Wildlife Service is offering a $5,000 reward for information that leads to successful prosecution in this case. Anyone with information on the death of the red wolf is urged to contact North Carolina Division of Refuge Law Enforcement Patrol Capt. Frank Simms at 252-216-7504 or Special Agent Matthew Brink at 919-856-4786 ext. 37.

Red wolves are governed by the rules established in 1995 setting up experimental, nonessential population. This means that landowners may be allowed to remove nuisance red wolf if it attacks their livestock or pets. Additionally, a red wolf that is taken incidentally to any type of otherwise legal activity, such as trapping coyotes following state regulations, on private lands in the red wolf recovery area does not constitute a violation of federal regulations provided that the taking is not intentional or willful and is reported to the Wildlife Service within 24 hours.

If someone accidentally kills a red wolf, they must report it by calling the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service toll-free at 1-855-4-WOLVES (1-855-496-5837). It is important to report red wolf incidents quickly so that officials can minimize conflicts and retrieve any carcasses while they are still intact.

To learn more about red wolves and the Wildlife Service’s efforts to recover them, visit this website.

The Red Wolf Recovery Program, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service effort to preserve the endangered species, is the topic of this month’s “Science on the Sound,” a monthly lecture series at the Coastal Studies Institute on the East Carolina University Outer Banks Campus in Wanchese.

Joe Madison, U.S. Fish and Wildlife North Carolina program manager, will present “Red Wolf Revitalization: Current Status of the Red Wolf,” at 6 p.m. Wednesday, June 14.

There is no charge to attend the program in-person at the institute or view the livestream on the CSI YouTube channel.

During the program, Madison is to discuss red wolves, their complex history, current population status, the Red Wolf Recovery Program, and the actions being taken to recover the species.

Madison has been a wildlife biologist for the federal government for more than 26 years, including the last six years with the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Red Wolf Recovery Program.

Madison spent most of his career as a federal wildlife biologist working on various aspects of endangered and at-risk species management, including direct species management, habitat management, National Environmental Policy Act compliance, Endangered Species Act consultation, and other collaborative partnerships on species such as red wolves, Cuban boa, California condor, gray wolves, sea turtle, black bear, grizzly bear and Canada lynx.

Editor’s note: The following report is drawn solely from Pete Benjamin’s comments as keynote speaker at the Wings Over Water Wildlife Festival and is not presented as representative of differing points of view on the controversial Red Wolf Recovery Program in northeastern North Carolina.

KILL DEVIL HILLS — Pete Benjamin has almost 10 years of hands-on experience supervising the red wolf recovery plan at Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge for the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Benjamin, Fish and Wildlife Service Raleigh office field supervisor for ecological services, was keynote speaker Saturday for the 2022 Wings Over Water Wildlife Festival, telling attendees he was optimistic about the species’ recovery. But he also acknowledged the process had been a difficult series of twists and turns.

Red wolves at one time filled forests and fields here, Benjamin noted.

“The early naturalists noted that the wolves in the New World were a little smaller than the wolves they were familiar with from Europe,” he said, adding, “Europeans also brought with them all their prejudices and feelings about wolves. And they set about eliminating predators as quickly as they could.”

Related: Managers report positive shift in red wolf recovery efforts

Those prejudices against predators extended well into the 20th century.

“My agency, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, up through the 1940s had very active program of predator eradication. That was part of our job,” Benjamin said.

Eradication measures were effective — by the 1960s, the few remaining red wolves in the wild were cornered in a small area in southwestern Louisiana and southeastern Texas.

Nature, however, seeks balance, and if a predator is removed from an environment, another inevitably takes its place.

“The coyote took advantage at that point,” he said. “In the early 1900s, its range started to expand quite dramatically, and it took over that role that had been filled by the other predators.”

Canidae biology allows any animal of the species to mate with any other of the species. Typically, they prefer to mate within their own species, “But when populations fall really low, the habitat is highly altered,” Benjamin said, “they will breed with others from the genus Canidae.”

When the Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966 became law, the red wolf, Canis rufus, was one of the first species recognized as being in danger of extinction. Since then, there have been numerous attempts to preserve the red wolf.

The agency’s initial response was swift, Benjamin said.

“A guy named Curtis Carley was sent by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service down to Texas. And his job was to find the last remaining red wolves and establish a buffer zone around that population to keep the coyotes and the red wolves separate,” he said.

Carley quickly realized that was not feasible. He also concluded that there were already few “true” red wolves left, and that most were coyote-red wolf hybrids.

Recognizing that the original plan for saving the species would not work, Carley crafted another solution.

“Carley came up with an idea … and it took him a few years to convince his bosses to go along with it,” Benjamin said. “They decided that the way to save the red wolf was to eliminate it from the wild. Bring the last few animals they could find into captivity.”

It was considered a bold move. “The first time ever an animal had been eliminated from the wild for its preservation,” Benjamin noted.

The Fish and Wildlife Service began trapping red wolves in the 1970s, before genetic analysis was available. Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma, Washington, provided a captive-breeding facility, and Carley initially trapped 400 animals. He and his team developed criteria for what would be considered a red wolf, and as the captured animals bred, those criteria were applied time and again.

“They whittled it down to 14 animals,” Benjamin said. “That is the founding population of all red wolves that we know of existing today.”

The plan was never to keep the entire red wolf population in captivity. The goal was to reintroduce them to the wild. But that too was an unknown.

“Could wolves raised in zoos learn how to be wolves again in the wild? Could they find their own food? Could they defend and their own territory?” Benjamin said.

In the 1980s, agency biologists believed they had found the ideal release site: Bulls Island at the southern end of the Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge on the South Carolina coast. Somewhat isolated from populated areas by extensive marsh, it seemed a good location for the wolves to succeed in the wild, but results were mixed.

The wolves did successfully hunt and establish territory. The biologists found they could successfully track the wolves, including when they left the island and ventured into nearby towns. 

A larger recovery area was needed.

Then, in 1986, the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge was established, and it seemed to check all the boxes for red wolf recovery, especially its size — 140,000 acres. Combined with the adjacent Navy bombing range, the wolves would have almost 200,000 acres total. And, perhaps most importantly, coyotes had not yet reached the region. After outreach to residents living near the refuge, breeding pairs were released into Alligator River.

Again, the learning curve for the field biologists was steep. The wolves covered far more territory than originally thought, with some of them roaming to Manns Harbor.

“And they eat a lot of deer. They really like deer,” Benjamin said.

Elsewhere, that may not have been important, but area hunters had been assured the wolves’ diet consisted almost entirely of smaller mammals.

Nonetheless, the population thrived, so much so that another first for reintroducing a species into the wild was tried.

“We developed the technique of cross-fostering,” he said. “They learned that if there was a litter of puppies born in the zoo at very nearly the same time as a litter in the wild, they can take puppies from that captive litter and just insert them into the wild. Since wolves can’t count, they just raise those foster puppies as their own. Puppies will grow up with all the experience and knowledge that they need to succeed.”

That appeared to work until the coyotes showed up in eastern North Carolina in the 1990s. Although research has subsequently demonstrated that red wolves will only breed with coyotes when there is no other option, in the 1990s that information was not yet available.

“We really didn’t understand at the time the dynamics that leads to interbreeding between red wolves and coyotes,” Benjamin said.

To prevent interbreeding, wildlife management scientists came up with another idea. The 1999 red wolf adaptive management plan was the first of its kind for the agency and the keystone was that, instead of just trying to remove the coyotes, they instead sterilized them.

Coyotes, like all canids, are territorial, and a breeding pair of coyotes will continue to protect its territory even if they can no longer reproduce.

But the plan did not address the larger issue of the exploding coyote population. As coyotes became more prevalent, hunting restrictions were relaxed. Hunters, unfamiliar with red wolves, too often mistook them for coyotes.

“Up until that time, vehicle mortality had really been the leading cause of death, natural causes a close second, but in about 2004, 2005, or so, gunshot took over as leading cause of death,” Benjamin said.

As he explained, for red wolves, highly dependent on their well-developed social structure, the death of a breeding pair or even one of the breeding pair, could halt reproduction for the entire season. The population plateaued at 120, Benjamin noted.

“And then it got a bit worse,” he said.

Concerns about the coyote population intersected with law and politics and the result was a stunning drop in cooperative efforts to protect the red wolf.

In 2012, the North Carolina Wildlife Commission permitted coyotes to be taken in daytime or night and allowed hunters to use spotlights.

“That prompted a number of environmental groups to challenge the state in federal court, saying that was going to inevitably lead to more take of red wolves in violation Endangered Species Act.

For a while, the judge banned hunting of coyotes in the five-county Albemarle Peninsula, Benjamin said.

It was a legal victory, but the cost to the red wolf management program was nearly catastrophic. Landowners adjacent to the refuge, who had been cooperative or indifferent to the management plan, suddenly no longer permitted access to their property.

“A lot of landowners just said, ‘Fish and Wildlife Service, you’re not allowed on my land,’” Benjamin recalled.

Effective red wolf management requires a hands-on approach. Dens need to be located, collars and tags are important for tracking the species and the health of litters is important to note. Without that information, management became difficult, almost impossible, and the result was a collapse of the wild red wolf population.

“By the 2018 we were down to where there were no remaining breeding pairs in the wild” Benjamin said.

Yet even as the Alligator River program was teetering on the brink of failure, there was reason for optimism for the species overall.

“At that same time, we were working hard with the (wolf) population under human care in zoos in 49 facilities around the country to grow the size of capital population because with only 14 animals that was the starting population, retaining the genetic diversity of species is very difficult to gain,” he said.

Then a second site, St. Vincent National Wildlife Refuge in Florida, produced a litter in the wild.

“That project is going on very well,” Benjamin said.

Alligator River, though, is still the primary test site for wild red wolf recovery. Here, there has been some recovery from the 2018 low of eight wolves and no breeding pair. For the first time since 2014, the agency is again releasing captive-bred wolves into the wild.

Many of the problems that plagued the program in its earliest days returned.

“There were no wild mating pairs so you could not do pup fosters. So, we’re back to where we were in the beginning of releasing adult zoo raised wolves,” Benjamin said.

Some wolves have wandered into towns and had to be removed. Others were hit by cars. A few were shot. But earlier this year, a litter of six wild wolf pups was confirmed, the first wild litter since 2018.

And the agency is trying to do better at working with locals.

“We’re spending a lot more time trying to work with people, landowners, stakeholders. We spend a lot of time talking to folks, understand their concerns, do everything we can to address those concerns,” Benjamin said.

Recognizing that attitudes about coyotes are unlikely to change and hunting continues, released red wolves are now fitted with orange collars.

She was young and shy, and showed no interest in him. He was new to the neighborhood, and besides, she already had a boyfriend, albeit one with a sketchy reputation. But the matchmakers, determined to lure her to the better choice, used a time-honored ploy: get her mother’s approval.

To the relief of Joe Madison, North Carolina program manager and wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Red Wolf Recovery Program, putting that relocated male red wolf into an acclimation pen at Alligator National Wildlife Refuge with the older resident female worked like a charm.

“Even though she was no longer breeding age, the thinking was if she accepted him into the area, then so would her daughter,” Madison explained during a virtual presentation held by the agency last week to discuss updates on the newly revitalized recovery program. “Over time … the daughter would visit the pen regularly. We timed the release of that male with when that younger female was likely in heat. After his release, he pretty much went straight to that female.”

The wild red wolf female quickly dumped the coyote she had been hanging out with, Madison added, and within a couple of weeks, the newly freed male red wolf dispatched his smaller rival.

Not only did he successfully bond with the young female, Madison said, the male wolf sired a litter of six pups this past spring — an unusually large litter for the critically endangered red wolf. And as of September, the now-teenage pups are still roaming in the same area with their mother and grandmother.

That is part of a positive shift for the species, which just a few years ago, after public and political hostility spurred agency cuts in the recovery effort, had seemed all but doomed in the wild.

But at a public in-person meeting held in Columbia last week, there was no adversarial remarks directed toward the refuge staff from the 50 or so attendees, Kim Wheeler, executive director of the nonprofit Red Wolf Coalition, said in a later interview.

“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has definitely recommitted to the (recovery) program, and part of that is transparency,” she said. “To me, that’s very encouraging … That’s not just words, it’s resources.”

It’s been a while since things were looking up for the species, the only known wild population of red wolves in the world. The spring litter of pups was the first born in the wild since 2018. New enclosures have been built to help introduce more captive-bred wolves into the 1.7-million-acre recovery area on public and private lands in rural Hyde, Tyrrell, Dare, Beaufort and Washington counties.

Despite some deaths from vehicles or gunshots, there are signs that the mortalities are decreasing thanks to better communication with hunters and landowners, reflective collars on wolves and signage on highways warning drivers to look out for red wolves.

As a policy, U.S. Fish and Wildlife staff don’t anthropomorphize wild wolves such as giving them names or birthday parties. In fact, they take pains to have as little contact as possible, in order to ensure that the animals maintain their fear of humans. But it’s helpful to have supporters of the Red Wolf Recovery Program cheer the survival successes for the social and intelligent creatures from the sidelines.

With the proposed update to the red wolf management plan expected to be finalized and implemented in 2023, the agency plans to continue its efforts to rebuild the species’ wild population, building on proven conservation strategies and protective measures as well as looking ahead to expanded options for habitat and genetic diversity.

Released in June, the draft revised recovery plan is open for public comments through Oct. 28. It is the first version of the recovery plan to be updated under the guidance of a 51-member recovery team that includes representatives from state wildlife agencies, wildlife and zoo biologists and researchers, residents and others.

“Part of that is a focus on collaborative conservation — that is, enhancing collaboration and communication and community and partner engagement,” Red Wolf Recovery Program Coordinator Emily Weller said during the presentation. “Because we’ve fully acknowledged that successful recovery for the red wolf will require collaborative efforts with those that are have a vested interest in red wolves, but most especially landowners in the local community.”

The wolf recovery staff has been meeting monthly with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, which oversees coyotes, deer, bear and other animals that live alongside wolves on the landscape, to share information and discuss coordination on management actions and revenue issues.

The agency, which is charged with administering management of endangered and threatened species, has also been providing more regular updates on social media and its website about red wolf activities. The wildlife service’s red wolf public phone hotline has also been improved to ensure more timely responses.

A new outreach program for landowners, called Prey for the Pack, has been launched by Fish and Wildlife to provide funding and technical assistance to landowners for habitat work to meet their land management goals. In exchange, landowners agree to allow red wolves on their land and for them to be monitored.

And in the interest of clarity, the wild red wolves will no longer be described in government-speak. Instead of being referred to as “the North Carolina nonessential experimental population,” or the NCNEP, the wolves will instead be known simply as the eastern North Carolina red wolf population.

Although the NCNEP will remain as the legal designation, Weller said, the words “nonessential” and “experimental” were often misinterpreted in a way that undermined the value of the species.

Historically, the red wolf had once roamed much of the Southeast, but overhunting and habitat loss diminished its population. In 1973, the species was listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act, and subsequently it was declared extinct in the wild. Meanwhile, Fish and Wildlife had captured some wild red wolves scattered on land in Louisiana, and in 1987 four pairs of their offspring were transferred to Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in Manteo.

Over the years, the recovery team used innovative management tactics to limit coyote hybrids, release captive-bred adults into the wild and encourage wild red wolf mothers to foster newborn captive-bred pups. By the mid-2000s, there were about 130 wild wolves in the five-county recovery area. But in recent years, with much of those management strategies discontinued, the numbers of known wolves had plummeted to as few as seven.

Amid a series of lawsuits from conservation groups that accused the agency of violating the Endangered Species Act, among other violations, the U.S. District Court in January 2021 ordered the agency to draft a plan to resume release of captive red wolves into the North Carolina recovery area. According to Fish and Wildlife, the first two phases have been implemented, and Phase 3, covering through May 2023 and coordinated with the state Wildlife Resources Commission, was submitted to the court in September.

Currently, there are 10 red wolves within the recovery area who are fitted with orange radio collars, Madison said, and as many as 10 other red wolves without collars. Those numbers do not include the six pups, who are not yet big enough to wear the collars.

There were also 13 known mortalities in the last two years, 11 of them captive-born releases. Five of the deaths were from vehicle strikes, three from gunshots, and three had unknown causes. In addition, there are 243 captive red wolves in 49 zoos and other facilities throughout the country.

It is illegal under the Endangered Species Act to shoot red wolves. Although coyotes are smaller than red wolves in weight and height, they look fairly similar from a distance or in low light.

All wild wolves are tracked and monitored. If they stray on certain private land, the wildlife service will contact the property owner. Several wolves who seemed too comfortable in populated areas have been removed and returned to captivity, Madison said. There are also 24 sterilized coyotes, which wear white reflective collars, that are monitored by the Wildlife Commission.

It is legal to shoot coyotes during the daytime within the red wolf recovery area, but Madison urged people not to kill collared coyotes, which can’t breed but keep other coyotes from entering their territory. In the process, the sterile animals are helping to keep the coyote population down by holding territory, he explained. The adaptive management strategy, developed around the late 1990s, also prevents coyotes and wolves from mating, among other good effects.

“One of the reasons it was developed was that within well-established red wolf territories, you have a lower amount of total canids, and it’s made up mostly of red wolves,” Madison said. “I don’t mean that it will necessarily exclude coyotes, but there’s a much, much lower coyote population.”

In general, coyotes — a highly adaptable species, inspiring some to compare them to cockroaches and rats — have greater need for prey and diversity of prey, including many bird species, he added. They also have an uncanny survival tool: If one coyote is removed, it typically will be replaced by several coyotes.

“And areas where there are no red wolves,” Madison said, “there’s a much higher total density of canids made up of coyotes because they have much smaller home range sizes.”

Even though red wolves avoid people, once in a while they’ll attack livestock or other animals. To address that concern, the Red Wolf Coalition has developed a depredation compensation program to reimburse landowners who lose livestock to the wolves.

“But as part of that, I want to tell folks that there’s only been nine documented incidences of red wolf depredation over the 35 years since their reintroduction into North Carolina,” Madison said. “So, it’s an extremely rare occurrence.”

And when reports are investigated, he added, the real culprit is usually found to be a dog, fox, bear or raccoon. Or, of course, a coyote.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials are asking for anyone with information on the death of a federally protected red wolf found in Tyrrell County last month to come forward.

The service announced Friday a $5,000 reward for information that leads to the successful prosecution in this case.

The red wolf, found dead April 15 in a muddy farm field south of Newlands Road, was shot in the spine, causing the wolf to collapse on the field. The red wolf’s lungs were found to be full of mud during a later necropsy.

Anyone with information is encouraged to contact North Carolina Division of Refuge Law Enforcement Patrol Captain Frank Simms at 252-216-7504 or Special Agent Jason Keith at 919-856-4786 ext. 34.

Red wolves are governed by the rules established in 1995 setting up the experimental, nonessential population. This means that landowners may be allowed to remove a nuisance red wolf if it attacks their livestock or pets.

If a red wolf is wounded or killed during an otherwise legal activity, such as trapping coyotes following state regulations on private lands in the red wolf recovery area, that does not constitute a violation of federal regulation as long as it was not intentional or willful and is reported to the service within 24 hours.

If someone accidentally kills a red wolf, they must report it by calling the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service toll free at 1-855-4-WOLVES. It is important to report red wolf incidents quickly so that service personnel can minimize conflicts and retrieve any carcasses while they are still intact, officials said.

MANTEO — Survival in the wild finally looks more hopeful for the critically endangered red wolf, with federal wildlife officials holding a remarkably upbeat meeting this week to provide details of its revitalized effort to save the species.

In response to a court order to restore the population in the red wolf recovery program in northeast North Carolina, as well as agency changes by the Biden administration, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced during Tuesday’s virtual gathering with numerous stakeholders that it will restore successful management tactics and add other protections to help the species thrive in the wild.  

“We are committed, more than ever before, to working with our partners — the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, landowners and other stakeholders — to identify ways to encourage and facilitate a coexistence between people and red wolves,” Catherine Phillips, the service’s assistant regional director in the South Atlantic-Gulf and Mississippi Basin Regions, said in a prepared statement. 

“The recent meeting allowed us to hear from the local community and stakeholders and to share with them what we are doing and plan to do going forward,” she added. “We cannot recover the red wolf without them. We look forward to this new era of communication, transparency, and collaboration with our partners on this extremely important journey.” 

Phillips is filling the role most recently held by Leopoldo “Leo” Miranda, who is currently the Southeast regional director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

One of the most immediate boosts will be the planned, court-ordered release of nine captive-bred red wolves into the wild before the end of winter. The sterilizing and releasing of coyotes, which hold territory from other, presumably fertile coyotes, has already been restarted. And as soon as the timing is right, the pup-fostering program, which involves sneaking near-newborn captive-bred pups into dens with wild pup litters, will resume.

“The service is revitalizing the whole red wolf recovery program — our commitment to red wolf conservation and building back success of the North Carolina population of red wolves,” Emily Weller, the red wolf recovery lead based in Lafayette, Louisiana, said in an interview. “So this has us not only looking at past successes and challenges and using that to inform our actions moving forward … but we’re also implementing innovative approaches.”

It is a head-spinning shift for the agency, which has been on the defensive for the last 15 years or so, when decreased public and political support led to cuts in the recovery program. At the same time, there was a jump in wolf mortality from gunshots — whether accidental or intentional — as well as poisonings and vehicle strikes.

Meanwhile, the agency’s combination of stalled, proposed or interim management and policy changes, accompanied by a series of lawsuits from conservation groups contending violations of the Endangered Species Act, rendered the remaining recovery program so controversial as to be dysfunctional and inadequate in protecting the species from extinction.

Once a prolific master predator that roamed a huge swath of the Southeastern United States, the red wolf, a victim of overhunting and habitat loss, was listed as endangered in 1973 under the act, and later was declared extinct in the wild. In 1987, Fish and Wildlife transferred four pairs of captive-bred offspring of a few wild wolves captured years earlier in Louisiana to the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in Manteo.

Today, only eight collared red wolves, and fewer than 20 red wolves without collars, still roam the five-county area in northeastern North Carolina, down from as many as 150. The 1.7 million acres are designated as what the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has categorized as a “nonessential experimental population of wild red wolves.”  

Some innovative tactics to help decrease wolf mortality would include installation of road signs warning to look out for red wolves and making the wolves’ tracking collars more visible to drivers, Joe Madison, program manager for the Red Wolf Recovery Program, told Coastal Review Thursday.  Bright orange and partially reflective — just enough to be visible at night, but not so much that it would interfere in the wolf’s hunting — the collars are also expected to help distinguish the red wolf from the similar-looking coyote.

It is legal to hunt coyotes, except at night in the wolf range, but, barring an immediate threat, it is against the law to shoot a red wolf.

Madison said that coyotes that have been sterilized and released will wear white or black collars. But since those coyotes can’t breed, and because they’re helping to control the population of coyotes, Madison said he hopes that people will see that it’s better not to shoot them.

Fish and Wildlife is also working closely with law enforcement to look at compliance issues with bans on shooting red wolves, said agency spokesperson Jennifer Koches.

When they’re released to their new home in North Carolina, the nine new wolf residents in North Carolina will include a family group and two breeding pairs, the agency said. They will be transferred from Species Survival Plan facilities, including the Endangered Wolf Center, the N.C. State University College of Veterinary Medicine, Rowan Wild, the Western North Carolina Nature Center and Zoo Knoxville. 

To Perrin de Jong, North Carolina staff attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups that filed legal action against Fish and Wildlife over its red wolf management, the agency’s turnabout and renewed focus on conserving the species was “a great surprise.”

“It was quite impressive and quite a change in tone and pace than we’ve seen previously,” he said told Coastal Review Wednesday.  “I’m looking forward to seeing the red wolf program succeed again.”

MANTEO — A controversial proposal to limit longstanding protective habitat and management strategies for critically endangered red wolves in northeastern North Carolina has been withdrawn by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The agency had proposed in 2018 to replace existing regulations that provided protective measures for the only known wild red wolves in the world, designated as the North Carolina “non-essential experimental population,” or NC NEP, with a significantly scaled-back rule. Numerous environmental groups had challenged the proposal in federal court, saying it violated requirements under a provision of the Endangered Species Act.

“Based on recent court decisions involving the NC NEP and having considered public comments submitted in response to the 2018 proposed rule, the Service determined that withdrawing the proposed rule is the best course of action at this time,” the agency said in a Nov. 10 press release.

By pulling the proposed rule, Fish and Wildlife has cleared the slate to start anew on previously successful management tactics used in the existing regulations, “as clarified by relevant court orders,” the release stated. That means that the under the 1995 management rule the agency has the authority to release additional captive-bred wolves into the wild population and conduct adaptive management — a matter of contention detailed in the 2018 proposal and subsequent lawsuits.

Fish and Wildlife will also resume work with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission to implement coyote sterilization on federal lands and nonfederal lands, subject to written landowner agreements, according to the press release. Also, the agency said that authorized take will be mostly limited to protection of oneself or others from potential harm.

Under the 2018 proposal, most of the private land in the 1.7-million-acre recovery area that encompasses Hyde, Tyrrell, Dare, Beaufort and Washington counties had been removed, leaving a small area in Dare County. With that plan gone, the five counties will remain in the recovery area.

“Conservationists have been waiting for 3 years to put the terrible 2018 red wolf proposal behind us, and it is extremely gratifying to know that USFWS is finally officially backing away from their plan to drastically scale back the recovery options for the wolves,” Ron Sutherland, chief scientist at Wildlands Network, a nonprofit environment group, said in an email. “To finally be able to put this awful, cowardly proposal to bed is super-gratifying and great news for the future of the red wolves.”

Sutherland said that an analysis by Wildlands, a vocal advocate for recovery of red wolves, public comments on the 2018 proposal found that more than 90% of the 100,000-plus comments received by the agency supported doing more, not less, to protect the wolves.

Although red wolves had once spanned a wide range along the U.S. Gulf and southeast coastal plains, their populations were decimated by overhunting and habitat losses. The red wolf was listed in 1973 on the Endangered Species Act as endangered, and declared extinct in the wild in 1980.

Four pairs of captive-bred wolves, descendants of a few wild wolves captured on the Gulf Coast, were released into Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in 1987, and by 2005, the numbers had increase to as many as 130 wolves.

Conflict with private property owners over wolf management had intensified in the last 10 to 15 years, with owners complaining of wolves killing pets and livestock, exacerbated by poor communication from wildlife managers.

The 1.7-million-acre recovery area will continue within Hyde, Tyrrell, Dare, Beaufort and Washington counties. But with as few as 10 known red wolves still roaming the recovery area, in addition to an estimated 20 or so uncollared wolves, wolf conservationists worry that there is no time to waste.

The agency said it is taking steps to improve the relationship with landowners.

“The Service will continue to work with stakeholders to identify ways to encourage and facilitate more effective coexistence between people and wolves …,” according to the release, “and to establish the support necessary for red wolf conservation.”

Gov. Roy Cooper tweeted in favor of the Interior Department’s decision, calling it “an important step to save the American Red Wolf, the most endangered canid species in the world.” Cooper vowed to work with the Biden administration, Wildlife Resources and the North Carolina Zoo to prevent extinction.

Perrin de Jong, a staff attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, called the plan to slash the red wolf’s recovery area “reckless and poorly conceived.”

“I’m relieved the Fish and Wildlife Service finally listened to the public’s outcry against it,” said de Jong. “People want federal agencies to do more, not less, to protect the world’s most endangered wolf.”

To learn more

• View the documents at www.regulations.gov, Docket No. FWS-R4- ES-2018-0035.
• View information about the red wolf recovery program.

MANTEO — Deven was born three years ago, and was still living with his parents, Charlotte and Jack, and three siblings, Marley, Maple and Ben.

Compared with the rest of the family, Deven was shy, suspicious and stand-offish.

In the world of red wolf conservation, those qualities made him an excellent candidate for life in the wilds of northeastern North Carolina. 

“He was the most elusive of his siblings,” Maggie Howell, executive director of the Wolf Conservation Center in South Salem, New York, told Coastal Review. “If you’d see all of them together, he’d be in the very back. He was kind of a wallflower.”

Wolves are by nature wary, she said, and the stronger the tendency, the better adaptation to coexistence in environments shared with humans.

The center currently has 38 wolves, including 21 Mexican gray wolves, 14 red wolves and three educational ambassadors. They’re fed roadkill deer and rarely interact at all with people. They have numeric names, also, but the human names make the animals more sympathetic, an important component of conservation.

“It’s really hard to get people open to embracing these really unique species and care about them if they have names like robots,” Howell said.

Deven was one of eight captive red wolves — four adults and four pups — that have been recently transferred to North Carolina as part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s red wolf recovery program. Since his arrival at the refuge, the young wolf has been fitted with a radio collar and is now roaming the forested swamps of the management area, 1.7 million acres of public and private land in Beaufort, Dare, Hyde, Tyrrell and Washington counties.

And if all goes as well as refuge managers hope, Deven will find himself a red wolf mate.

“What they want is for him to forge a bond so he can breed,” Howell said. “We certainly hope that this can be an active management effort like it used to be. We don’t want to have animals in captivity in vain. We need them in the wild.”

The other three adult wolves came from the Endangered Wolf Center in Missouri and Wolf Haven International in Washington state, and the four pups came from the Akron Zoo, according to a press release Wednesday from the Endangered Wolf Center.

“This collaborative effort is the first time since 1998 that adult American red wolves were released directly into the recovery area of Eastern North Carolina from managed care facilities,” according to the release, “and is the first time since 2014 that red wolf pups have been fostered into the wild from managed care facilities.”

Essentially, fostering involves sneaking pups into litters with pups about the same age when the mother leaves the den to hunt. Remarkably, most wolf mothers will adopt the newcomers and care for them as her own.

In the most recent fostering, all four captive-bred pups were slipped into a den on May 1, and so far, it appears that the pups have been adopted, Fish and Wildlife Region 2 Public Affairs Specialist Jennifer Koches said in an email, responding to Coastal Review.

“In January 2022, we will evaluate the ‘success’ based on survival,” she said. “The den is monitored from a distance as to not cause disturbance. Once the pups are older and move away from the den site, attempts will be made to monitor them as with all wild red wolves.”

Including the pups, there are currently 18 red wolves that are known to be in the population, Koches said. Of the recent releases, two adult red wolves were at Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge and two were at Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge. The pups are in a den at Pocosin Lakes. 

Historically, American red wolves once thrived in a wide range along the U.S. Gulf and Southeast coastal regions, from Pennsylvania to Missouri to Texas to Florida. But between overhunting and habitat loss, the population declined dramatically. In 1973, the red wolf was listed on the Endangered Species Act as endangered, and in 1980, the species was declared extinct in the wild.

But in 1970s, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had managed to capture a few wild red wolves on the Gulf Coast, and began a captive breeding program. In 1987, four pairs of captive-bred wolves were released into Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge. Today, more than 200 captive-bred red wolves are housed in facilities throughout the country, but the only known wild wolves are in North Carolina. 

The saga of the red wolf recovery program over the years is nearly as tangled as the dense swamp forests in which the wolves prowl.

With innovative management techniques such a pup fostering and sterilizing coyotes to hold territory and prevent hybridization, the wild population steadily grew. By 2005, as many as 150 red wolves were estimated to be living in the recovery area, and the program was lauded nationwide for its effectiveness. But less than 10 years later, the wolf population had been depleted and the management was undermined by politics and underfunding.

Considering that the number of collared red wolves not long ago had been as few as seven, with perhaps another dozen unmonitored, it’s encouraging to see more wolves being added to the population, said Ramona McGee, staff attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center in Chapel Hill.

“This is great news,” she told Coastal Review. “We need to make sure this is not a one-off event.”

In November 2020, the law center, representing nonprofit groups Red Wolf Coalition, Defenders of Wildlife and the Animal Welfare Institute, filed a lawsuit against Fish and Wildlife, contending that the agency had failed to uphold its obligation under the Endangered Species Act to implement management practices to conserve the animals. In a separate action that month, the conservation groups requested a preliminary injunction to halt the agency’s recent policy to not release captive wolves, saying that the wolves were at risk of going extinct while the lawsuit was pending.    

Specifically, the law center wanted Fish and Wildlife to resume immediately its management plan that had included freeing captive wolves, including pups, into the wild. A federal judge ruled in January that the agency must develop a release plan by March 1.

But when the plan was provided, it only called for release of one pair of wolves.  After the law center filed a response that said that at least eight wolves needed to be added for the population to recover and performance measures needed to be developed to track progress, the agency eventually amended its plan and released the eight captive wolves in late April and early May.

“It’s exciting,” McGee said about the releases. “I think it’s also important to remember that it took a court order to get the agency here.”

Koches, with Fish and Wildlife, declined to comment on the ongoing legal actions.

McGee said the groups want more transparency and accountability from the agency about its recovery plan management decisions, actions and results. They also requested ongoing court supervision.

At a status conference on Thursday with U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina District Judge Terrence Boyle and the agency, McGee said that their concerns were heard, but for now, no action was taken.

The next step, she said, is “to see when and whether the court issues any order about our concerns.”

But, she added, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re on hold.

“I think we all are continuing to monitor this situation closely,” McGee said. “We will be very interested to learn more about how these releases go and anything else the agency volunteers to share with us about the state of red wolf recovery.”

RALEIGH — Hanging on by a Darwinian thread in northeastern North Carolina, the world’s only known wild red wolves may soon get a population boost, with a federal judge ruling late last week that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service must again release captive-bred red wolves into the management area.

With only seven collared and about a dozen or so untagged wild red wolves remaining in the management area, 1.7 million acres of public and private land in Beaufort, Dare, Hyde, Tyrrell and Washington counties, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina Judge Terrence Boyle sided with conservation groups, ruling that the agency was “likely” in violation of the Endangered Species Act and must take immediate actions to save the species.

Fish and Wildlife said in a 2018 federal notice that current regulations limit the release of captive wolves, but Boyle responded that their future depended on it.

“Failing to release additional wolves, from either the captive population or wild population at St. Vincent National Wildlife Refuge, will all but certainly result in the extinction of the red wolf in the wild in North Carolina” the judge wrote in the Jan. 21 ruling. “Preliminarily enjoining defendants from effecting its policy regarding captive red wolf releases is necessary to prevent this outcome.”

Although red wolves are allowed to roam free at the St. Vincent refuge, it is considered habitat for captive wolves to breed.

The Southern Environmental Law Center, representing nonprofit groups Red Wolf Coalition, Defenders of Wildlife and the Animal Welfare Institute, contended in a November 2020 lawsuit that Fish and Wildlife had failed to uphold its obligation under the act to implement management practices to conserve the animals.

The law center asked for the court to order immediate reinstatement of the practice of repopulating the wild wolves with captive-bred wolves. More than 200 captive red wolves are currently held in various facilities throughout the country.

“Contrary to the Fish and Wildlife Service’s recent actions, this order confirms once again that the Endangered Species Act requires recovery of the red wolf in the wild,” Sierra Weaver, senior attorney at the law center, said in a statement. “The agency has to stop managing for extinction and instead take meaningful action to rebuild the wild red wolf population in North Carolina.”

The Fish and Wildlife Service, through spokesperson Daffny Pitchford at the regional Atlanta office, declined to comment on the ruling.

After being listed as endangered in 1967 and declared extinct in the wild in 1980, four pairs of red wolves were released in Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in 1987. Captive wolves — including pups snuck into dens when a wild wolf mother was out hunting — continued to be released as part of the recovery program for nearly three decades.

At its height around 2005, the wild population had been estimated to be at least 130 to as much as 150. Despite its steady progress, by 2012 the program was challenged by a series of conflicts: More wolves were being killed by gunshots, poisoned or vehicles, and opportunistic coyotes were breeding with wolves. Meanwhile, public and political sentiment turned against the red wolves, and by 2015, Fish and Wildlife cut back on management strategies.

Boyle also ruled against the agency in a decision in October 2020 in a lawsuit brought by nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, when he ordered Fish and Wildlife to update its red wolf management plan by February 2023.

In granting plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary injunction, Boyle ordered the Fish and Wildlife Service to develop a plan by March 1, 2021, to resume releasing captive red wolves into the Red Wolf Recovery Area. But he stopped short of mandating a specific number.

“All parties were able to agree that releasing family groups and pup fostering are two of the most effective ways to release red wolves and increase their chance of survival in the wild,” the judge said in the ruling. “The parties further agree that the release of red wolves unprepared to live in the wild fails to further conservation.”

The agency’s plan must include metrics that will be used to measure performance, which must be provided to the court at a joint status update in six months.

“We are grateful that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will finally abide by its responsibility to protect this critically endangered wolf,” said Ben Prater, Southeast program director at Defenders of Wildlife, in a statement. “Releasing wolves into the wild is a common sense, science-backed approach to boost this population and stave off the red wolf’s extinction. While the species has a long way to go, this is a major step in the right direction.”

Updated Wednesday to include response from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Destiny for red wolves may be determined in the courtroom, as the clock is ticking louder for the seven remaining red wolves known to be roaming northeastern North Carolina.

In the most recent in a series of legal action against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over its management of the critically endangered species, the Southern Environmental Law Center filed a lawsuit Monday challenging the agency’s claim that it cannot release any more captive wolves into the wild, despite prior success of the management strategy.

“We have been encouraging them to restart their releases for a long time now,” Sierra Weaver, senior attorney at the Center, said in an interview. “But they claim they were bound by this policy. So it was time to go to court.”

Representing nonprofit conservation groups Red Wolf Coalition, Defenders of Wildlife and the Animal Welfare Institute, the law center contends that Fish and Wildlife is violating the Endangered Species Act by failing to take the necessary action to save the wolves. In this case by adding captive-bred wolves to expand the last known wild population of red wolves in the world.

The agency’s rule authorizing reintroduction of wolves from the captive population, now numbering more than 200, “does not include and has never included a limit on the number of red wolves that may be released,” according to the lawsuit.

“The important thing about that is it appeared in the 2018 federal notice for the first time,” Weaver said, calling the restrictive policy “invented.”

Up until then, she said, captive-bred red wolves had been released for 27 years into the red wolf recovery area, which spans 1.7 million acres of public and private land in Beaufort, Dare, Hyde, Tyrrell, Washington counties, including the Dare County Bombing Range and Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge.

In the notice published June 28, 2018, in the Federal Register, Fish and Wildlife explained that changes were needed to reduce conflict, and that the current regulations were ineffective in “fostering coexistence between people and red wolves.”

In addition, the agency said that current regulations “limit the number of red wolves that can be released on the landscape.” The 1986 regulations limit release up to 12 wolves, the notice said, and no additional releases were authorized in subsequent revisions in 1991 and 1995.

In the draft environmental assessment that Fish and Wildlife released in June 2018, which proposes “replacement of the regulations for the nonessential experimental population of red wolves in northeastern North Carolina,” the agency provides more details on how the management approach of the species evolved.

Under provisions of the Endangered Species Act, the red wolf population was designated “nonessential experimental” because there was a protected population in captivity, initially of about 80 animals.

According to the draft environmental assessment, the 1986 rule specified that “8 to 12 red wolves would initially be released on the (Alligator River) refuge.” Four pairs of animals were released in September 1987, and by September 1992, 42 wolves had been released on 15 occasions, resulting in the birth of at least 22 pups.

Although the reintroductions were deemed a successful way to repopulate the species, it was complicated by the growing population expanding its range to private properties.

Further complications developed when coyotes started moving into the recovery area in the mid-1990s. More conflicts developed with landowners, and wolves started breeding with coyotes, creating a hybrid that threatened to undermine the genetic identity of the red wolf. Between 1987 and 2013, there were about 10 poisonings and 85 gunshot deaths of red wolves.

In response to the management challenges, the agency contracted in 2014 with the Wildlife Management Institute to review the reintroduction effort. After reviewing the institute’s report, as well as other information, the document said, Fish and Wildlife decided to realign rule language with management actions, including “release of animals from captivity into the wild beyond the 12 originally evaluated.”

In response to subsequent litigation by the law center in November 2018, the Fish and Wildlife Service suspended further action on the proposed rule. A federal court ruled that the agency had violated the Endangered Species Act by suspending conservation efforts.

In an emailed statement issued Wednesday in response to Coastal Review Online’s inquiry, the agency affirmed its commitment to red wolf recovery and management of the nonessential experimental population.

According to the statement, which was provided by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesperson Jennifer Koches, the agency monitors wolf movement, pack dynamics and the wolves’ general health, as well as promotes public awareness and education through public outreach and partnerships. It also investigates mortalities and performs veterinary care and genetic analysis on the animals.

“We are engaged in recovery efforts and continuing to do so, including updating the Red Wolf Recovery Plan and increasing the captive population to ensure the genetic health of the species and support future reintroductions,” the statement reads.

The agency said it is continuing the trapping and translocation efforts it did last winter to re-establish breeding pairs in the recovery area. It has also contracted with the Conservation Planning Specialist Group to assist in the update of the recovery plan.

Of the seven remaining wolves that are fitted with radio collars, some are approaching old age. Another dozen or so uncollared wolves are also believed to be living in the recovery area. No pups have been born in the wild since 2018.

In another federal court ruling in October 2020 by the Center for Biological Diversity, the agency was ordered to complete its updated red wolf management plan by February 2023.

But Weaver said the red wolf may not have that much time to wait.

“Our goal with this lawsuit it to make sure we have wolves on the ground by 2023,” she said. “We are on the brink of extinction now.”

Weaver said that if the management strategies that had proved so successful were brought back, the red wolf can be saved from the brink.

“Fish and Wildlife has done this before,” she said. “They can and should be doing this again — and they know how to.”

In a report released Tuesday by an ad-hoc committee with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, details were provided on research plans that will evaluate the taxonomy of previously unknown potential red wolves in Louisiana, as well as strategies to examine evolutionary relationships between red wolf populations.

Meanwhile, the only remaining wild population of red wolves in Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge has withered from its peak of about 150 to about seven collared wolves, about half of which is approaching old age. Conservation efforts have suffered under years of bitter conflict with landowners, political controversy and questions about coyote hybridization.

“It’s never easy to decide what a species is or isn’t — it’s one of those easier-said-than-done tasks,” committee chair Joseph Travis with Florida State University said during a webinar on Tuesday about the report, “Evaluation of Applications to Carry Out Research to Determine the Taxonomy of Wild Canids in the Southeastern United States.” “But the controversy extends beyond the scientific realm because the red wolf has been the subject of extensive conservation and recovery efforts that are not universally positive — let’s face it.”

The academies’ report on the new research, commissioned by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, was issued on the heels of an agreement between the agency and the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, approved Oct. 2, that requires a final revised recovery plan for red wolves be completed by Feb. 28, 2023.

Considering the difficulty of restoring the population in North Carolina, the center wants the agency to reintroduce red wolves at other suitable locations.

According to the center’s October 2019 report, “Return for America’s Red Wolves,” a total of 20,000 square miles of habitat on public lands in North Carolina, Florida, Virginia, West Virginia, Arkansas and Alabama would support about 500 breeding pairs of red wolves.

“Each of these areas meet basic requirements for successful reintroductions,” the report said, “including adequate prey base, potential for reproductive isolation from coyotes (to reduce hybridization), connectivity to other possible reintroduction sites, and low human and road densities.”

The center faults Fish and Wildlife for dropping successful management tactics such as coyote sterilization, releasing captive wolves to the wild and pup fostering that contributed to the steady growth of the wild red wolves in the five county recovery area.

“I don’t think you could ever recover such a widespread species if the efforts are only focused in North Carolina,” Collette Adkins, the center’s carnivore conservation director, said in an interview.

Adkins said that the center has not received any response from the agency seeking information about its plans.

“It just looks like they’re completely stalled,” she said. “We want them to at least start identifying some sites so that they can begin that long process. Because they’re going to need to build public support and find the right scientists to collaborate with, and they’re just not doing it.”

The Fish and Wildlife Service is committed to working together, through partnership, to complete the management plan update on time, Phil Kloer, public affairs specialist for the agency’s Southeast region, said in an email, responding to an inquiry.

“Updating this recovery plan is a priority for the Service,” he said.

In the last 50 years or so, Travis said, scientists have learned that it is “not unusual at all” to see species with a history of admixture — combining of genes between different species. For instance, he said, some groups of humans have Neanderthal genes, but it doesn’t make them any less of a valid species.

“But it can make it more difficult to decide what a red wolf really is — and was,” he said.

The new research will build on the National Academies’ 2019 report that was requested by Congress and sponsored by Fish and Wildlife, which confirmed that red wolves were a distinct species.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine bills itself as a nonprofit, nongovernmental group that  provides independent and objective advice to benefit society, advance science and promote progress.

Kloer said that Fish and Wildlife requested the new research to continue its efforts “to refine our understanding of the differences and similarities between what is currently defined as the distinct species of red wolf from the historic red wolf species genome.

“FWS requested that (the Academies of Sciences) develop a research strategy that would identify the types of studies needed to improve understanding of genetic ancestry, phylogenetic relationships, morphology, behavior and ecology,” Kloer wrote in the email.

According to the academies’ report, genetic analysis will be looking at the species dating to pre-1800, known as the ancient period before colonists started moving west; the historical period 1800 to 1920, before coyotes started moving east; and the modern period, post-1920, looking for distinction in lineages and evidence of genetic continuity.

Travis said that there are very few ancient red wolf specimens to examine.

“It’s not going to be easy to get ancient DNA,” he said.

The sampling and genome sequencing will seek to answer questions about relationships between the North Carolina population of red wolves and newly discovered Gulf Coast red wolves, as well as to what degree red wolf genes are mixed with other canids, such as coyotes.

“There may be few issues as challenging as the canid issue because of how rapidly they diverged … and then what looks like a considerable exchange of genes,” Travis during the webinar. “Nonetheless, we think this could be a model for the way these kind of questions could be investigated in the future.”

What is clear to conservation groups right now is that the red wolf won’t be able to survive much longer in the wild unless their management is quickly improved.

Not only should Fish and Wildlife resume its prior successful management tactics in Alligator River, it should release more wolves into the wild from the more than 200 wolves in captivity to lands in  North Carolina and at other locations, said Ron Sutherland, chief scientist at the nonprofit Wildlands Network.

At the same time, he said, the agency must invest in landowner outreach.

“There is no valid reason why the federal government can’t step in with emergency releases of captive red wolves to save the wild population this winter,” Sutherland said in an email. “Personally I think that a robust financial incentives program is what we need to bring farmers back on board with hosting the red wolf on their properties in eastern NC, as well as in any other states where reintroduction programs are started.

“Landowners should be able to make as much or more money supporting America’s red wolf recovery program as they can leasing their farms out to deer hunters,” he said.

A new habitat improvement program has been announced to help private landowners support wildlife on their property, including endangered species such as red wolves, while also meeting their land management goals.

Participants in the program will receive technical assistance and financial cost-share to help them implement habitat improvement projects on their property.

Prey for the Pack projects on private lands may include early successional, forested or riparian habitat improvement, prescribed burning, native vegetation plantings, and wetland enhancement.

“Conservation of wildlife begins with habitat. With the majority of land in North Carolina being privately owned, it’s vital to form conservation partnerships with landowners to prevent loss of habitat and wildlife, especially when it comes to threatened or endangered species including red wolves,” said Dr. Liz Rutledge, director of Wildlife Resources at the North Carolina Wildlife Federation.

The percentage of financial cost-share provided to a landowner will vary depending on their selected level of project involvement. Landowners may participate in the Prey for the Pack program in conjunction with other conservation programs. Once the habitat improvement project is completed, the habitat must remain in the improved condition for 10 years to satisfy the project agreements.

To discuss the program, contact Sarah Loeffler, Refuge Volunteer & Program Coordinator, at sarah.loeffler@ncwf.org or by phone at 252-796-3004, ext. 222.

COLUMBIA — As the number of known red wolves roaming in the wilds of northeastern North Carolina has dwindled to a mere dozen, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says it is taking steps to increase the wild population while methodically making progress on its revised management plan for the critically endangered species.

On the heels of an uproar from wolf supporters about the agency’s proposal to drastically decrease the wolf’s recovery area, a federal judge’s ruling on Nov. 5, 2018, agreed with a challenge from environmental groups that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was not abiding by its legal requirement to properly protect the red wolves.

Promptly after the decision, the agency announced that the proposed revision to the species’ management would have to go under additional review.

Nearly 18 months later, there is still no final red wolf management plan. But a spokesman assures that work has been ongoing.

“Updating the Red Wolf Recovery Plan is a priority for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,” Phil Kloer, public affairs specialist for the service’s Southeast Region, said in a Feb. 21 email in response to an inquiry from Coastal Review Online.

“We originally intended to complete the revised recovery plan in 2018,” Kloer responded. “However, delays in the species status assessment, which serves as the scientific basis for the recovery plan, and the congressionally mandated taxonomic review of the red wolf resulted in the Service postponing work on the recovery plan.”

With the most recent species status assessment in April 2018 affirming the endangered status of the red wolf, Kloer said that the service had been working since then to develop the proposed final recovery plan. The plan will be followed by the “recovery outline” that will determine “specific actions and locations,” according to Kloer’s email.

“We are in the process of completing the next phase in plan development through a competitive bidding opportunity,” Kloer said in the email.

Recent modifications by the Trump administration to the Endangered Species Act, or ESA, were not retroactive and will not affect any management strategies for the red wolf, he added.  The agency, which is charged with implementing the ESA, first listed the red wolf as endangered in 1967, and declared it extinct in the wild in 1980. Seven years later, four pairs of captive-bred pups were released in the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge. Since 1995, the animals have been managed under a special rule as a “nonessential, experimental” population.

Over the years, the number of wolves grew – estimates have ranged from 130 to 151 – while the designated recovery area expanded to 1.7 million acres of public and private land in Hyde, Tyrrell, Washington, Beaufort and Dare counties.

Innovative techniques

Much of the success in the recovery program was attributed to two innovative management techniques: the use of sterile coyotes to hold territory and limit encroachment into red wolf territory, and sneaking captive-born wolf pups into wild wolf dens while mom is hunting.

But in 2014, the recovery program was facing increasing criticism from property owners and some public and elected officials over concerns that wolves were endangering pets and livestock and depleting deer populations. Eventually pup adoption and coyote sterilization were both dropped.

Meanwhile, more wolves were being killed by gunshots, whether because they were mistaken for a coyote, which can be hunted legally during daytime hours, or intentionally shot, which is against federal law. But in an effort to address complaints from landowners, Fish and Wildlife had also begun allowing limited takes of wild wolves on private property.

Speaking in September 2016 during a congressional hearing, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said that 514 private landowners and farmers had each sent letters to the Fish and Wildlife Service requesting that red wolves be kept off their land. Tillis characterized the recovery program as a failure and called for it to be shut down.

A year later, the agency proposed a drastic reduction in the recovery area to a portion of the Alligator River refuge and the military bombing range near East Lake on the Dare County mainland. The proposal would also allow wolves outside the range to be shot.

But in the November 2018 ruling, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina Chief Judge Terrence W. Boyle said that the Fish and Wildlife Service had violated the ESA by cutting successful management tactics. He also ordered a permanent ban on the capture and killing of red wolves on private property without proof of a threat to people, pets or livestock.

In response to a question about whether the Fish and Wildlife Service is considering reinstituting the coyote sterilization strategy, Kloer said that the agency is working with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission “on canid management within the northeastern non-essential, experimental population.”

Analysis of potential red wolf recovery areas in other states, he added, “will be part of the process to update the recovery plan.”

Kloer also said “it is premature to speculate” whether or not the captive wolf pup fostering will be resumed in the future.

Right now, there aren’t any established wolf couples looking to settle down in the den with the family. For the first time since red wolves were reintroduced to northeastern North Carolina, there were no documented wolves born in the wild in 2019, nor were there breeding pairs, according to Joe Madison, manager of the Red Wolf Recovery Program.

Currently, there are 12 known wolves – that is, those wearing radio collars – living within the five-county recovery area, he said. Including uncollared wolves, the total wild population is estimated at about 20. There are also 245 captive red wolves in 42 facilities such as zoos and conservation centers throughout the U.S.

In December, the Fish and Wildlife Service built two acclimation pens in the Alligator River refuge, and one in the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, in hopes that 30 days or so of  wolf “dating” would result in bonded mating pairs.

However, Madison said, it has been a challenge to capture the wild wolves to get them together with wolves transferred from the St. Vincent National Wildlife Refuge, a red wolf propagation site located on an island off the coast of northwestern Florida.

“These wolves are very trap-savvy,” Madison told an audience at the Pocosin Lakes Wildlife Refuge visitor center in Columbia after a showing in January of the 2015 film, “Red Wolf Revival,” a documentary about the recovery program.

The goal, he said, is to create three new breeding pairs, each composed of one native and one imported wolf, within the recovery area as a way to both sustain the wild population and increase its genetic diversity. But like people, sometimes wolves just don’t click. For example, the female in a failed match at a Columbia site wouldn’t let the rejected male into the den.

“They’ve got their own personalities,” Madison said in an interview.

Ideally, when a compatible couple wearing new radio collars is released into the wild, the newcomer wolf will want to stay in the same territory as the local wolf and will successfully produce a litter of about four pups by early May.

“What we’re doing now is all stuff that has been under the management for years, for decades,” Madison said.

Under an interpretation of the existing management rule, the agency does not have the authority to do pup fostering because it had not been properly specified, Madison said. The proposed rule that is still under review, however, has added that authority.

The Fish and Wildlife Service regularly monitors the radio-collared wolves, he said, including via twice-weekly flights, weather permitting.

Although it doesn’t specify locations, webcams on the Wolf Conservation Center website allow people to watch – and comment on – actual real-time captured wolf activities. At one site, wolf fans have been spying on the courtship of red wolves “Tyke” and “Lava” in an acclimation pen, which appears to be a large fenced area in the woods, with a hole in the ground, presumably the den.

“Tyke’s looking for his sweetheart!” exclaimed one commenter of a screenshot of a handsome wolf gazing into the woods.

Another commenter interpreted a shot of Tyke sprawled over the top of the den area, fast asleep, as a sign that Cupid may have struck: “Tired – and hopefully – pleased.”

Stepped-up outreach

Such public engagement with the lives of wolves may be a positive for the species, but the agency’s goal with red wolves is essential to their survival: To foster better communications with the community that has to actually coexist with the species.

To that end, the agency has also stepped up outreach to the community, Kloer said.

A public information session, he said, was conducted jointly by Fish and Wildlife and the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission in December 2019 to advise the public regarding planned management activities.

“We intend to host similar sessions in the future on approximately a quarterly basis,” Kloer said.

It’s a matter of balancing tolerance of wild wolves by landowners with their need to protect their property, livestock and pets, said Kim Wheeler, executive director of the nonprofit Red Wolf Coalition based in Columbia.

On the flip side, with a more open and respectful dialogue, the community can appreciate the agency’s role in preserving red wolves, which are master predators that serve as essential counterweights to coyote overpopulation and help maintain healthy numbers of prey.

“I think it’s a wonderful idea,” Wheeler said. “I think that has been a Fish and Wildlife challenge in the past.”

Conversation helps everyone to find common ground, she said, because “we all have wonderful conservation values.”

Representatives from different government agencies and environmental groups and nonprofits have also started having regular phone conferences to discuss red wolf issues. Wheeler said comments and updates from all the players are available on the coalition’s website.

And with the proliferation of coyotes – they’ve been spotted in places as unlikely as the streets of Chicago – as well as wild hogs, jellyfish and carp, people are starting to see the result of an imbalance of nature.

Wheeler, who is starting her 15^th year at her job, said that she had seen encouraging signs for the wolves, including an increase of supporters for red wolf recovery efforts.

“I refuse to believe that the red wolf won’t find a place on the landscape,” she said.

But there is continuing concern that the Fish and Wildlife Service is not doing enough to save the red wolves.

“What’s unfortunate, that’s a little too late,” said Ramona McGee, staff attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center in Chapel Hill, which represented plaintiffs the Red Wolf Coalition, Defenders of Wildlife and the Animal Welfare Institute in the action Judge Boyle ruled on. “But it’s nowhere what needs to be done for that species.”

In the months since the ruling, the law center has been kept in the dark about what measures are being considered in the ongoing review, McGee said, while recovery efforts “continue to languish.”

In response to public records requests made in October, she said, some documents are starting to be provided by the Fish and Wildlife Service. But so far, the released information, such as documents about the wolf transfers from St. Vincent, has not added to understanding the agency’s response.

“It’s not something new,” she said about the transfer strategy. “It’s something that the Fish and Wildlife Service had in the works before the court ruled … The facts do not show that program being ramped up.”

The law center believes that the pup-fostering and coyote-sterilization management tactics are essential to survival of the red wolves in the wild, McGee said. But the clock is ticking.

“It is very troubling to watch the agency hold the fate of the species in their hands and have the tools available to rectify that,” she said, “and not rectify that.”

Front page red wolf photo: Sam Bland

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will host free screenings in January of  “Red Wolf Revival,” a 2015 documentary about the last remaining wild population of red wolves.

The screenings will be Jan. 10 at Pocosin Lakes Refuge Visitor Center in Columbia and Jan. 24 at the National Wildlife Refuges Visitor Center on Roanoke Island. There will be a question and answer session following the Jan. 24 screening that will include updates on the current status of the wild red wolf population and insight on the conservation and management efforts of the species.

Doors will open at 5:30 p.m. and the screenings will begin at 6 p.m.. Seating is provided on a first come, first serve basis.

“Red Wolf Revival” is a a documentary by Roshan Patel and Nestbox Collective that captures the story of the United States’ endangered red wolf, and the last remaining members of its wild population.

Centered on the historic recovery effort in Eastern North Carolina, the film documents the multifaceted struggle to reintroduce one of the rarest animals on earth to North Carolina in the face of cultural, economic and biological challenges.

The Southern Environmental Law Center filed a lawsuit Monday, alleging that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was withholding requested information on the critically endangered red wolf population in Eastern North Carolina, the News & Observer reported.

The Southern Environmental Law Center filed a public records request that was not fulfilled for data on the red wolf population and documents related to the government-run program to protect the animals, according to the report.

The Freedom of Information Act lawsuit claims that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is breaking public records law by refusing to release information on the wolves.

In 1980, the species was declared extinct in the wild, though there were some wolves in captivity. Fish and Wildlife Service began a program in the late 1980s to reintroduce red wolves into the wild at the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in Eastern North Carolina. The number of red wolves peaked at 130 in 2006, but the population has shrunk to around a dozen in the wild, according to the News and Observer.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Disparaged by some critics of the red wolf conservation program as “coy-wolves” unworthy of federal species protection, the red wolf now has official scientific backing that it is indeed its own separate wolf species.

A 94-page report, Evaluating the Taxonomic Status of the Mexican Gray Wolf and the Red Wolf, released Thursday by the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine finds that the red wolves roaming in northeastern North Carolina, some of the few remaining in the wild, have genetic characteristics that are unique to the historical red wolf.

“They do share genes with gray wolves and coyotes,” Joseph Travis, chairman of the Committee on Assessing the Taxonomic Status of the Red Wolf and the Mexican gray wolf, said in an interview. “However, red wolves have genes that are found in neither gray wolves nor coyotes. That tells us they are not just hybrids. They really are distinct.”

The study, requested by Congress and sponsored by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, also finds that the Mexican gray wolf is a valid taxonomic sub-species. Based on “the intellectual contributions of a host of scientists,” Travis wrote in the report, the assessments included examination of the fossil record and published research from the last 100 years. The earliest specimen identified as a red wolf goes back 10,000 years.

Historically, red wolves – bigger than coyotes and smaller than gray wolves – ranged over much of the southeastern U.S., but because of overhunting and other pressures, populations declined drastically in the 20th century. After being listed as endangered in 1967, red wolves were declared extinct in the wild in 1980.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service transferred four pairs of captive wolves to Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in 1987, and eight years later the agency formalized a plan to manage the “nonessential, experimental population” in a five-county recovery area in northeastern North Carolina.

The agency has managed the red wolf as valid taxonomic species under federal Endangered Species Act regulations. But the program’s initial success has been marred by controversy over red wolf range on private property and its genetic identification.

Proposed management changes that would drastically shrink the red wolves’ range and active management of the animals by Fish and Wildlife Service are currently on hold. The agency did not respond Thursday morning to a request for comment on the academy’s assessment.

“Now that the National Academy of Science experts have deemed the red wolf to be a valid species, it is time for FWS to stop looking for excuses and start revamping and revitalizing their stalled recovery efforts for the red wolf in the wild,” said Ron Sutherland, chief scientist for Wildlands Network, a nonprofit environment group that has advocated for red wolf conservation. “With only about 25 free-ranging red wolves left in eastern North Carolina, the species only has a few years to go before it succumbs to extinction in the wild for a second and possibly final time.”

Derb Carter, senior attorney and director of the Southern Environmental Law Center’s North Carolina offices, said the report confirms the longstanding classification of red wolves as a distinct species deserving of protection, underscoring the urgency for the Fish and Wildlife Service to act to save the wild red wolf.

“A federal court found in November that the agency violated the Endangered Species Act when it ended proven conservation measures like coyote sterilization and releases of captive red wolves and failed to respond to the ongoing decline of the species. Now, USFWS has stated that there is only one known breeding pair of red wolves left in the wild. Time is running out to do what we know is required to save this species,” Carter said.

Scientists have also confirmed, Travis said, that a population of wild wolves that live on Galveston Island in Texas share the same historical red wolf genes as the North Carolina wild red wolves.

The National Academy describes itself in a media release as private, nonprofit institutions that provide independent analysis in the interest of solving complex problems and to inform public policy decisions.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife announced Friday that in light of the federal court ruling issued earlier this month, the agency will extend its review of a proposed rule to adapt its management of red wolves in North Carolina. The service did not specify the duration of the review.

“The additional review time will provide the Service the opportunity to fully evaluate the implications of the court decision,” Phil Kloer, a Fish and Wildlife spokesman for the Southeast Region, said in an email.

Even with a federal judge’s recent ruling in favor of conservation of red wolves in northeastern North Carolina, uncertainty remains whether reinvigorated management of the endangered species would be able to reverse course to save the world’s only wild population of the species – or whether the conditions exist to even try.

Only two or three dozen red wolves still roam the swampy forests and farmland within the 1.7 million-acre recovery area in Hyde, Tyrrell, Dare, Beaufort and Washington counties, down from the peak in 2006 of about 130. About 200 wolves also live in captivity.

In the Nov. 5 decision, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina Chief Judge Terrence W. Boyle declared the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service violated multiple provisions of the Endangered Species Act by discontinuing successful management tactics that controlled coyote hybridization and integrated captive wolf pups into the wild population.

Boyle also ordered a permanent ban on the capture and killing of red wolves on private property without proof that people, pets or livestock were endangered.

It was a clear victory for the plaintiffs, the Red Wolf Coalition, Defenders of Wildlife and the Animal Welfare Institute, at least for now. But the wolves’ future in the wilds of North Carolina will hinge on how Boyle’s decree is reflected in Fish and Wildlife’s  final management rule, which was expected to be published by Nov. 30.

Inquiries to the agency seeking information about the impact of the ruling were referred to the U.S. Department of Justice, which did not respond to emailed questions.

The ruling stated that there no impediment for the court providing relief to plaintiffs “pending publication of a final rule.”

Released this summer, the “Proposed Revision of the 10(j) Rule for the Nonessential Experimental Population of Red Wolves in North Carolina” would dramatically downsize the wolves’ range to land in Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge and the Dare County Bombing Range in Dare and Hyde counties. Animals that strayed beyond that protected area could be killed. About two packs – 10 to 15 wolves – are estimated to currently live in the proposed range. Also, the proposed final rule would not restore coyote controls or release more captive-born wolves into the wild population.

“The proposed rule will not in any way remedy the legal violations,” said Sierra Weaver, senior attorney in Chapel Hill for the Southern Environmental Law Center, or SELC, which represents the plaintiffs. “You can’t simply take away these management measures.”

Weaver said much of the rule-making process was done “behind closed doors,” so she said it is not surprising that the agency has not communicated about its response.  As of this publication, the law center had not heard from Fish and Wildlife.

“What the agency is going to do is up to the agency,” she said. “To comply with the judge’s ruling, they’re going to have to go back to … those measures that they know had worked.”

D.J. Schubert, wildlife biologist with the Animal Welfare Institute, said it is a “bit of a waiting game” to see what the final rule will be when Fish and Wildlife finally puts it out, but the mandate in the Boyle’s ruling is not in doubt.

“It’s black and white on paper that a federal court has said (to) a federal agency . . . ‘What you’re doing is wrong and you have to fix it ’,” Schubert said. “The Fish and Wildlife Service knows what the tools are, so it’s not some mystery. They know what to do – it’s just a matter of them doing it.”

Local Opposition

Red wolves once roamed vast swaths of the southeastern U.S., but by the 1960s, predator controls, habitat loss and overhunting left the population decimated.  Listed as endangered in 1967, the species was declared extinct in the wild in 1980.  Some surviving wolves captured along the Gulf Coast were successfully bred in captivity for 10 years.

In 1987, four pairs of pups were released in the Alligator River refuge, and within five years, there were about 30 wolves. At some point along the way, the recovery area was expanded to its current 1.7 million acres, encompassing public and private land in five counties. Before long, much to the surprise – and resentment – of farmers and other landowners, red wolves started wandering onto their property.

That was when the agency’s relationship with the community started to sour.

“Who gave the Feds the right to spread an endangered species throughout those 1.7 million acres of private or state ownership?” Wilson Daughtry, owner of Alligator River Growers and part-owner of Lux Farms, both in Engelhard, asked in a recent email.

Boyle’s ruling, Daughtry said, appears to have “given the pro-wolf advocacy groups the green light to try and force these animals upon the private landowners again, by applying pressure to FWS through his ruling.” And that, he added, “is a classic taking of private land for public use without just compensation.”

The problem is not so much that a wild predator is trespassing on their land – bear and fox are also prolific in the region – it’s that the landowner can’t do anything about it, he said. Red wolves are protected under the Endangered Species Act, which is administered by Fish and Wildlife, and it is unlawful to kill them.

From Daughtry’s telling, it seems as if the program may have gotten off on the wrong foot soon after it started. Recounting an incident where a Hyde County landowner was arrested for shooting a red wolf that was in his pasture with his cows, he said the man was charged with a federal crime. Part of his penalty, in addition to a fine, he added, was cleaning the wolf pens.

“That guy thought he was going to serve some serious time for what he did,” Daughtry said. “How do you think he, his family and his community now feel about the Red Wolf program?”

Without compensation, no landowner that he knows in the recovery area would back the program, Daughtry said. On the contrary, he said, people feel as if the agency is “shoving the wolves down our throats” and that the agency misled them and can’t be trusted.

Tyrrell County landowner Jett Ferebee took the helm about six years ago for other landowners in the recovery area who oppose the red wolf program. Since then, he has been a vocal advocate for elimination of the program, and has succeeded in getting attention and support from state and federal public officials. Ferebee has contended in numerous published letters and comments that the red wolf is really just a coyote hybrid and undeserving of protection, and that the recovery program is a failure and a waste of taxpayers’ money. The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission also contends that coyote inbreeding has doomed the recovery program.

But intentional killings by gunshot and poisoning may have been more of a threat to the wolf, with incidences increasing over the years. Some of the shootings were the result of mistaken identity, with the shooters confusing the wolves for coyotes.

When the recovery program was going full steam in the 2000s – the program’s goal initially had been 220 wolves in the wild – biologists were having wonderful luck with mother wolves accepting captive wolf pups, sprinkled with a little urine from a wild pup, that were added to dens when she left to hunt. Many wolves were fitted with tracking collars, and the number of packs, dens and births every year were counted and monitored by a recovery team based at the Alligator River refuge.

Another very successful management technique to limit coyote hybridization involved capturing and sterilizing coyotes, and then returning them to where they were captured. The coyote instinctively would hold the territory, in the process keeping out fertile coyotes. As the law of the jungle – or forest – would have it, a bigger wolf would eventually show up, dispatch the coyote, and move in.

But when more wolves were killed, whether by vehicle strikes or gunshots, it disrupted the balance, allowing fertile coyotes to slip back through holes created by absent wolves. Furthermore, the deaths would sometimes remove half of a mating pair, or a mother caring for pups, negatively affecting their reproduction.

By 2012, Fish and Wildlife, responding to decreased political and community support, started scaling back the program, and eventually eliminated much of the active management, including pup fostering and coyote sterilization.

Schubert said that, despite the antipathy from some landowners, many have been very supportive of the red wolf recovery program. Still, successful management efforts have to include working together with landowners and hunters, she said. “Fish and Wildlife has learned over the year that engaging with the local community is critical,” she said. “I hope they would reconsider how they view the red wolf and not view the red wolf as an enemy … They can be part of a conservation success story.”

Additional habitat also must be found for the red wolf, otherwise the species recovery range is in danger of going from “one to none,” Schubert explained.  “It’s really risky to have a single recovery area.”

The Endangered Species Act, “one of the strongest and best laws in the world” for recovery of species, Schubert said, operates with an understanding that the act wouldn’t be capable of recovery of every species only on federal land. “It really requires buy-in and cooperation from private landowners,” she said.

The best science is supposed to dictate management, Schubert said, but it doesn’t mean landowners’ rights can be ignored. They should be kept informed of management actions. At the same time, she said, landowners also have responsibilities to participate in the rule-making process.

“But the reality is, if we are to protect the amazing diversity we have in North American, that includes uses of the land to protect endangered species. It just requires more effort to make sure you get the required permits.”

An analysis by Wildlands Network provided in a Nov. 1 press release found that nearly 99 percent of the more than 108,000 comments on the proposed rule submitted to Fish and Wildlife supported strong federal protections for red wolves. The same percentage of support was evident in comments submitted just by North Carolinians, and by nearly 80 percent of comments submitted by those living in the five-county recovery area.

Gov. Roy Cooper also expressed support for the recovery program in a comment submitted to the wildlife service.

‘Dastardly Acts’

Ron Sutherland, conservation scientist with Wildlands Network, said that in light of Boyle’s stern rebuke of Fish and Wildlife, it would great if the agency went back to its prior adaptive management strategies. At least, he is hoping that the ruling will result in more oversight over the agency’s management of the red wolves.

“It makes me feel good inside that the federal agency is not getting away with violating the spirit of the Endangered Species Act,” he said. “There were so many dastardly acts that were done in the last three or four years.”

Sutherland said that the wolves have been blamed unfairly by hunters for decreases in deer populations.

Since 2015, he has led an effort by Wildlands Network to photograph wildlife in northeastern North Carolina using motion-detection cameras with infrared light for night shots. Thousands of photographs, posted on the photo-sharing site Flickr, show wolves, coyote, bear, deer, fox and various other wild animals going about their business. It also showed, Sutherland pointed out, that there are plenty of deer.

Recent photographs, he said, captured groups of two or three wolves in the Alligator River refuge.

In July, the group hired a woman to conduct outreach in the community, Sutherland said.  One project they’re planning is to partner with landowners to install motion-detection cameras on their property.

Sutherland said he is “cautiously optimistic” that Fish and Wildlife will do more to help the red wolves and that the recovery effort can turn the corner.

Whatever the agency’s response turns out to be, Weaver said that community outreach by Wildlands Network and the Southern Environmental Law Center’s clients could go far in restoring “peaceful co-existence” with wild red wolves.

“What we know is that the public overwhelmingly supports red wolf conservation,” she said. “There has been a very, very small number of incidences with these animals … that’s all a red herring.”

CHAPEL HILL – A federal judge ruled Monday that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service violated provisions of the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act in its rollback of protections of red wolves in eastern North Carolina.

U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina Chief Judge Terrence W. Boyle also made permanent the court’s Sept. 29, 2016, order stopping the USFWS and private landowners from capturing and killing red wolves without first demonstrating that the wolves are a threat to human safety or the safety of livestock or pets.

The case was brought by the Red Wolf Coalition, Defenders of Wildlife, the Animal Welfare Institute and the Southern Environmental Law Center. In addition to the Fish and Wildlife Service, its acting director Jim Kurth and acting regional director Mike Oetker of the service’s Southeast region were named as defendants.

Boyle found that USFWS’ “argument that their current red wolf management efforts are sufficient and within their discretion fails,” according to the ruling.

Conservation measures that had helped the red wolf population grow from 16 animals in 1987 to more than 130 in 2016 had been abandoned in recent years, advocates said, allowing their numbers to drop to as few as 24 in the wild.

“For four years now, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been dismantling one of the most successful predator reintroductions in U.S. history,” said Sierra Weaver, senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center. “The service knows how to protect and recover the red wolf in the wild, but it stopped listening to its scientists and started listening to bureaucrats instead.  The law doesn’t allow the agency to just walk away from species conservation, like it did here.”

The Fish and Wildlife Service moved to avoid court action on the lawsuit by proposing a new rule in June to restrict wild red wolves to one National Wildlife Refuge and a bombing range in eastern North Carolina, while allowing the immediate killing of any wolves that live on or wander into nonfederal lands. Previously, these wolves could roam a designated 1.7 million-acre, five-county Red Wolf Recovery Area.

Conservation groups opposed the proposal, seeking reinstatement of previous management measures.

“Rolling back protections is the opposite of what this species needs,” said Kim Wheeler, executive director of the Red Wolf Coalition. “The court’s ruling today makes clear that the USFWS must recommit to red wolf recovery and resume its previously successful management policies and actions.”

Conservationists noted that virtually all of the more than 108,000 public comments on the agency’s proposed rule were opposed. Fewer than 50 comments, including 13 from a real estate developer, supported the proposal to restrict red wolves to federal lands in Dare County.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is giving the public another opportunity to comment on a proposed rule that would remove management efforts from existing private lands and instead focus continuing efforts on certain public lands in Hyde and Dare counties, the agency announced Friday.

The proposed rule would replace the existing regulations governing the nonessential experimental population of the red wolf under section 10(j) of the Endangered Species Act.

The public comment period for the proposed new rule will be reopened for an additional 15 days beginning Aug. 13 and will close Aug. 28. The service will accept comments received or postmarked on or before Aug. 28.

The initial 30-day comment period on the proposal closed on July 30. Comments already submitted need not be resubmitted, as they will be fully considered in preparation of the final rule.

The proposed rule, published June 28 in the Federal Register,  is based on a comprehensive four-year evaluation of the northeast North Carolina nonessential experimental population of red wolves designated under section 10(j) of the ESA, according to the release. A public meeting was held in Manteo July 10 that drew about 70 people, who shared comments and perspective on the new rule.

Public input is needed on a variety of areas including, but not limited to NC NEP contribution to red wolf recovery; ideas and strategies for promoting tolerance of red wolves on private property outside the NC NEP management area; and ecological, agricultural and socioeconomic effects of the proposed 10(j) rule. A complete list of information the Service is seeking can be found in the proposed rule.

To submit electronically, visit the Federal eRulemaking Portal. In the search box, enter the rulemaking docket number FWS-R4-ES-2018-0035. Click on the Search button. On the resulting page, in the Search panel on the left side of the screen, under the Document Type heading, check the Proposed Rules box to locate this document. You may submit a comment by clicking on “Comment Now!” Electronic comments should be submitted by 11:59 p.m. EST on Aug. 28.

Hard copies can be mailed or delivered to Public Comments Processing, Attn: FWS-R4-ES-2018-0035, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, MS: BPHC, 5275 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church, Virginia. 22041-3803.

All comments are posted on regulations.gov, including any personal information provided.

The proposed rule, comments and materials received, as well as supporting documentation, are available for public inspection online; by appointment during normal business hours, at the Raleigh Ecological Services Field Office, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 551F Pylon Drive, Raleigh, NC 27606; telephone 919-856-4520; or facsimile 919-856-4556. Persons who use a telecommunications device for the deaf (TDD) may call the Federal Relay Service at 1–800–877–8339.

Learn More

• Public offers comments on red wolf proposal
• Service proposes new management rule for non-essential, experimental population of red wolves in NC

RALEIGH — Seventeen North Carolina legislators have joined a dozen lawmakers from other states in condemning a recent U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposal to reduce the federal red wolf recovery area in northeastern North Carolina to land within the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge and the adjacent Dare County Bombing Range.

In a joint statement submitted Monday, the 29 state legislators said the plan to reduce the recovery area by 90 percent would wipe out the population of red wolves, of which fewer than 30 remain in the wild.

The proposal, announced June 28, would also allow land owners to kill any wolves found outside the restricted area. The public comment period on the plan ended Monday.

The Animal Welfare Institute of Washington, D.C., said most of the more than 50,000 comments received were opposed to the agency’s plan.

“North Carolina, its citizens, legislators and a majority of Americans believe that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service should expand its efforts to recover the red wolf and its habitat,” said North Carolina Rep. Pricey Harrison, a Greensboro Democrat, who signed the statement. “The agency is blatantly neglecting its job and its duty under the Endangered Species Act.”

Harrison was joined in signing the statement by North Carolina Reps. Deb Butler, D-New Hanover; John Autry, D-Mecklenburg; Verla Insko, D-Orange; Gale Adcock, D-Wake; Joe John, D-Wake; Bobbie Richardson, D-Franklin; Marcia Morey, D-Durham; Susan C. Fisher, D-Buncombe; Grier Martin, D-Wake; Yvonne Lewis Holley, D-Wake; Evelyn Terry, D-Forsyth; Mary Belk, D-Mecklenburg; and Sens. Floyd McKissick Jr., D-Durham; Paul Lowe Jr. D-Forsyth; Valerie P. Foushee, D-Chatham; and Terry Van Duyn, D-Buncombe. Also signing were state legislators from Georgia, Kentucky, Indiana, Connecticut, Washington, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Alaska, Michigan and Ohio.

The USFWS proposal comes nearly two years after a federal court ordered the agency to stop capturing and killing endangered red wolves, in response to a lawsuit brought by the Animal Welfare Institute, Defenders of Wildlife and the Red Wolf Coalition, represented by the Southern Environmental Law Center. The animal protection and conservation groups are challenging the USFWS in federal court.

In their statement, the legislators urged the USFWS to consider an alternative plan, “Alternative 2,” which recommends regular reintroductions of new individuals to boost the wild population of red wolves, a renewal of efforts to prevent interbreeding of red wolves and coyotes, stepped-up law enforcement against poachers and broader outreach to local residents.

“Rather than reverse red wolf recovery and accelerate population loss by diminishing the North Carolina recovery area, (the USFWS) should work to better protect the existing wild population through actions such as reducing gunshot mortality and gaining support from adjacent landowners,” the legislators wrote.

The red wolf recovery program was once considered successful. Red wolves were declared extinct in the wild in 1980. Four pairs of captive wolves were transferred to the Alligator River refuge in 1987 and a five-county recovery area was created in 1995. By 2006, an estimated 130 to 150 wolves roamed the recovery area.

Supporters say the animals are naturally reclusive and not a threat to humans or livestock. “Rather, they preyed on animals such as the nutria—which the state has spent millions to eradicate—while keeping the coyote population in check,” according to the Animal Welfare Institute.

But landowners in the northeastern part of the state say that wolves that have ventured outside the refuge and onto their properties have destroyed crops, killed livestock, wiped out deer and rabbit populations and other wildlife and interbred with coyotes. They see the recovery program as a violation of their private property rights. Some have accused federal officials of mismanaging the program.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In an apparent concession to waning political and public support, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday announced a proposed rule that would no longer manage endangered red wolves on private land in northeastern North Carolina.

The action would reduce the animals’ range from 1.7 million acres to 204,000 acres.

But the agency would still continue protecting red wolves under the Endangered Species Act within federal lands in the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge and the Dare County Bombing Range in Dare and Hyde counties under the proposal.

“We’re going to be managing this population intensely,” Leopoldo Miranda, assistant regional director for ecological services at Fish and Wildlife’s Southeast Region, said during a press conference.

If the rule is finalized, red wolves outside the proposed range would no longer have federal protection from being intentionally killed.

Miranda said the successful adaptive management practices that had helped control coyotes and encourage wild wolf mothers to adopt captive pups would be re-implemented where appropriate. The agency will also be looking for additional areas to expand within the red wolf’s historic range in southeastern states, he said, although he declined to specify which states or regions are being considered.

As it is now, he added, current conditions in northeastern North Carolina are not self-sustaining for the wolves. Miranda said that under the proposal, the agency would focus more on propagation of red wolves so that their wild behaviors strengthen the genetic integrity of the offspring.

Only 35 or so red wolves still survive in the wild within the current designated recovery area in Hyde, Tyrrell, Washington, Beaufort and Dare counties, down from a peak of about 130 in 2006. Of those, about 10 to 15 wolves, or about two packs, live in the proposed area. About 200 wolves also live in captivity in various facilities.

“Success is to keep this smaller population, as much as possible, on federal land,” Miranda said, adding that the agency will adapt the program as science provides more insight.

But Kim Wheeler, executive director of the Red Wolf Coalition, a 40,000-member nonprofit based in Columbia, in Tyrrell County, said she is worried that the small amount of land and the decreased protection provided in the proposed rule will hinder the red wolf’s chances.

“I don’t know if this gives the red wolf a clear path for survival in the wild,” she said. “It’s discouraging all around, but we don’t want red wolf supporters and advocates to give up.”

Once hailed as a bold, innovative conservation success story, the red wolf recovery program fell apart with stunning speed. First listed as endangered in 1967, red wolves were declared extinct in the wild in 1980. Four pairs of captive wolves were transferred in 1987 to the Alligator River refuge, and in 1995 the agency finalized a plan to manage what it called the “nonessential, experimental population” in the designated five-county recovery area.

That’s around the same time Fish and Wildlife may have made a fatal oversight by not communicating in advance with private landowners, many of whom operate farms or use their land for recreational hunting.

“Once those animals were released and they left the refuge, they came to visit with me, because that’s where the food was,” said Wilson Daughtry, owner of Alligator River Growers and part-owner of Lux Farms, both in Engelhard. “And we couldn’t do anything about it.”

Roaming predators crossing private land is not unusual in rural northeastern North Carolina, with its vast populations of bear, fox, coyotes and other wildlife. What is different about the red wolves is they are federally protected, and by law cannot be harmed.

As a consequence, Daughtry said, if a red wolf came onto his property and destroyed his crops, his right to defend his property was superseded by the wolf’s federal status. But the recovery program was already in place when landowners started seeing red wolf interlopers.

“You basically put something here that we didn’t ask for and we didn’t want,” he said. “To me, that is the root of the whole problem – and it only got worse.”

Intentional killings by gunshots and poisoning, in addition to hybridization with coyotes, quickly became the program’s biggest challenges. Between 2003 and 2011, for instance, 80 red wolves had been shot.

Jett Ferebee, a Tyrrell County landowner, has been one of the most vocal opponents of the red wolf program, hammering politicians and agency officials in numerous letters and public comments about what he contends are “coy-wolves” that decimate deer and rabbit populations and don’t deserve government protection.

But to Daughtry, it’s a private property issue more than anything. Not everyone objects to red wolves on their land, he said, but everyone should have a right to say so. Once the landowners started complaining loud enough, Daughtry said, the federal government offered them “a very small amount” of money, or “pandering to try to appease us,” as he saw it.

“They came to us as a way to see if we could work something out,” he said. “In all honesty, that’s what they should have done in the beginning, instead of waiting until everybody was pissed off.”

But Daughtry said it’s a “shame” the program hadn’t worked out, and he blamed upper management, not the local staff. The bottom line, he said, is that the agency should have known the wolves wouldn’t stay put in the refuge, and it should have offered something like lease-hold rights to private property owners as compensation.

“No landowner in their right mind is going to agree to have an endangered wolf on their land without some kind of safety net,” he said.

The agency also has its critics in non-governmental organizations within the conservation community for pulling back from protection of the species.

“Under the new plan, any wolves that either remain or wander outside of the greatly reduced recovery area would lose all federal protection, unless they stay on other national wildlife refuges in the region,” Ron Sutherland, conservation scientist for Wildlands Network, said in a prepared statement. “Otherwise, hunters and landowners would be allowed to kill red wolves with no repercussions, apart from a request from FWS to return the radio-collars from dead animals.”

Sutherland also said that there is tremendous public support for recovery of the red wolves, with only 10 of a total of 55,000 comments submitted to the agency favoring elimination of the program.

In moving forward, Miranda acknowledged that mistakes were made, and vowed that the agency will improve communication.

“I will ask the community and the NGOs (non-governmental organizations) to help us manage the conservation of the species,” he said. “I am the first one to say, ‘Yeah, that’s probably true that we dropped the ball in terms of working with landowners.’ This is not just a Fish and Wildlife effort. We know we cannot conserve this species – or any species – by ourselves.”

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• Service proposes new management rule for non-essential, experimental population of red wolves

The world mourned in March as the last male northern white rhino, Sudan, passed away.

Guarded continuously by armed patrols, Sudan was euthanized and laid to rest as the last male of its kind – a clan of rhino that lived for millions of years and withstood every challenge except humanity. With only two females remaining, the northern white rhino is now staring down the barrel of certain extinction and represents, as Sudan’s caretakers put it, “a cautionary tale for humanity.” If we’re to prevent another human failure of this kind, we must use its passing as an opportunity to speak not only for other globally imperiled species, but for those in our own backyards. For North Carolinians, that means raising our voices on behalf of the red wolf.

A small handful of anti-wolf landowners have applauded this calamitous proposal. In their view, the red wolf’s disappearance would benefit private landowners in the recovery area. The science, however, suggests the opposite.

Since the red wolf makes regular meals of nest predators like raccoons, it’s believed that turkey and quail populations are higher in the Red Wolf Recovery Area than elsewhere. The red wolf also preys upon invasive nutria that otherwise damage crops and as the larger of the two species and when in healthy numbers, the red wolf will suppress coyotes. As for deer, the annual harvest has increased in the Red Wolf Recovery Area for the past 30 years.

All the evidence suggests that the Red Wolf Recovery Area is, in fact, one of the state’s richest hunting locales.

Yet, what is ultimately at issue here is not a matter of ecology or annual harvests. The real issue before us is one of commitment. The FWS is entrusted with protecting and recovering our nation’s most imperiled wildlife.

In the 1980s, critics thought the red wolf was a lost cause. Back then, according to FWS, the species was already “99 miles down a 100-mile-long road to extinction,” and, to some, the recovery effort seemed hopeless. After only two decades, however, heroic FWS biologists proved the skeptics wrong and accomplished the impossible: with 151 wild wolves, as well as a strong captive population, the species was placed on the road to long-term recovery.

Around that time, though, FWS experienced dramatic shifts within its senior leadership that would ultimately prove fatal. Rather than leaving the program in the hands of recovery biologists, agency administrators in Atlanta, acting on behalf of two anti-wolf landowners and under pressure from the state of North Carolina, brought the program to its knees, ending critically important management efforts that had sustained wolves in the wild. The red wolf population predictably collapsed and today fewer than 45 likely remain in the wild with only 23 known wolves on the landscape, according to the species status assessment.

If the agency moves forward with its latest plan, the wild recovery effort will be drastically curtailed, and the red wolf could become nothing more than a zoo curiosity — a prospect that, for virtually all North Carolinians, is simply unacceptable.

During the latest public comment period, over 55,000 comments were submitted from all 50 states, 99.8 percent of which were opposed to FWS’s plan. Only 25 comments were anti-wolf and only 10 comments backed FWS. Within the recovery area itself, 68.4 percent of landowners voiced their support for the species. Scientists have publicly urged the agency to reconsider, warning that its plan is not supported by science and is a sure-fire recipe for extinction.

In eastern North Carolina, we are blessed with an abundance of wildlife. Home to black bears, alligators, huge flocks of game birds, deer and turkey, it is a wildlife paradise. There are few comparable places left on the East Coast. It is also the last holdout of the red wolf’s historical territory, which was once spread throughout the Southeast. As a proud North Carolinian, I find that inspiring. We need only drive 30 minutes from the beach to discover, hidden among the pine forests and swamps, the world’s most endangered wolf.

Just as it took courage to pull the red wolf from the jaws of extinction, it will again take courage for the Fish and Wildlife Service to honor the public trust. It will also take your voice. Contact Acting Regional Director, Mike Oetker, and encourage him to stand by his agency’s hallowed mission and fight for the red wolf – otherwise we can be sure that the species will, like the northern white rhino, become a memory of our wilder past.

FWS Acting Regional Director Mike Oetker: Phone: 404-679-4000

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• Defenders of Wildlife

To stimulate discussion and debate, Coastal Review Online welcomes differing viewpoints on topical coastal issues. See our guidelines for submitting guest columns. The opinions expressed by the authors are not necessarily those of Coastal Review Online or the North Carolina Coastal Federation.

In a month filled with news about red wolves, the death of a captive red wolf pup Saturday in Durham perhaps is symbolic of the arc of hope and despair for the fate of the endangered species.

The birth of a litter of three wolf pups at the Durham Museum of Life and Science last week gave an emotional buffer for supporters when a species assessment report issued three days later raised doubts about the continued survival of wild red wolves in their northeastern North Carolina habitat.

“Even though I know that death is a regular part of this process, and the first month of life is very fragile,” Animal Department director Sherry Samuels wrote on her blog, “it was quite shocking and heartbreaking.”

Although the long-overdue, five-year status review and assessment required under the Endangered Species Act, or ESA, released April 24 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, recommended that the red wolf remain listed as endangered, its future management is still unknown.

In light of precipitous losses in both the animal’s wild population and their public support, the unchanged status in the review, based on the latest science, is good news for the wolves.

“I try to encourage folks not to over-interpret and be too pessimistic about the prospects for the red wolves,” Pete Benjamin, field supervisor in Fish and Wildlife’s Raleigh office, said in an interview. “I think there are opportunities and hope for the species.”

The number of red wolves roaming the 1.7 million-acre recovery area — public and private land in Hyde, Tyrrell, Washington, Beaufort and Dare counties — has plummeted to about 40 from the population peak in 2006 of about 130.

Last September, the agency proposed decreasing the wolves’ range to federal land in Dare County, a strategy condemned by some conservationists who contend the restriction would doom the species. The revised Endangered Species Act rule, environmental assessment and proposed management plan are expected to be released for public comment by summer’s end.

“Our job is to try to recover this species,” Benjamin said. “Regardless if we were going to determine to terminate the northeastern North Carolina population – I’m not saying we’re going to do that – that does not mean we are giving up on the red wolf recovery.”

Red wolves had once ranged from Texas and Louisiana to the Ohio River Valley to the Atlantic coast into northern Pennsylvania, but because of habitat loss and predator-control efforts, their population dwindled to only southern Texas and Louisiana.

Listed as endangered in 1967, the red wolf was declared extinct in the wild in 1980. But seven years later, four pairs of captive wolves were transferred from Texas to the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern North Carolina, an area deemed suitable partly because it had no coyotes. In 1995, the agency finalized a rule to manage the “nonessential, experimental population” of captive-bred red wolves in the recovery area.

Innovative and intensive management strategies were developed in the field that were so successful they were used as a model in other wolf conservation programs. Two tactics – sneaking captive-born pups into wild nests, and using sterile coyotes as placeholders to limit encroachment into wolf territory – led to steady increases in red wolves.

But about four years ago, faced with diminished political and public support, the agency scaled back the program. Gunshot deaths started increasing, and wolves lost ground to coyotes. With fewer wolves to mate with, hybridization with coyotes became more of a concern.

A captive-breeding program, which is managed separately, has continued at numerous zoos and wildlife facilities throughout the country, including the one in Durham. There are currently about 200 red wolves in captivity.

Despite release of the recent assessment that mandates continued management to protect the species, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has lapsed on its legal duty to protect the species, said Sierra Weaver, senior attorney for Southern Environmental Law Center, or SELC, in Chapel Hill.

“They are still in violation of that requirement, regardless of releasing the status review,” Weaver said in an interview. “These are management measures that had been used since the 1990s. They had been used successfully. It was when Fish and Wildlife made its changes that that population plummeted.”

On behalf of the nonprofit Red Wolf Coalition, the Defenders of Wildlife and the Animal Welfare Institute, the law center in November 2015 filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina against the agency for violations of the ESA, including authorization of the killing of a breeding female and suspension of reintroduction of captive wolves into the wild population.

The legal complaint also cited the agency’s failure to do the five-year species review required under the ESA. Prior to the just-released review, the last review had been conducted in 2007.

Weaver said that review of legal briefs in the case is expected to be completed in late June, which may be followed by oral arguments to U.S. District Court Judge Terrence Boyle.

In November 2014, the SELC reached a settlement with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission that allowed coyote hunting in the recovery area to resume in daylight hours. Judge Boyle had granted the law center a temporary injunction in May of that year banning coyote hunting because of its detrimental effect on wolves. Four wolves were shot in 2012 shortly after a temporary rule allowed spotlight night hunting of coyotes. Hunting of red wolves is illegal, but they can be mistaken for coyotes, especially at night.

“By designating the red wolf as protected and dedicating funding and efforts for more than 25 years in program to rehabilitate the once nearly-extinct species,” Boyle said in his ruling. “Congress has repeatedly demonstrated that it has chosen to preserve the red wolf – not simply to let inaction determine its fate.”

According to the Wildlife Management Institute, between 1987 and 2014, the program has cost about $30 million.

Gunshot mortality has been a big factor in undermining species recovery. By 2003, 28 wolves had been shot. Between 2004 and 2011, an additional 52 wolves were shot.

After Boyle’s ruling, public sentiment against the red wolf got only worse. One month after the injunction was issued, the Wildlife Commission requested a review of the red wolf reintroduction program. In November 2017, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., asked Fish and Wildlife to end the red wolf recovery program.

Weaver said the latest status review reinforces the urgency of the need for the agency to resume the previously successful management practices to ensure that the wolves survive in the wild.

“They absolutely have a chance,” she said. “The only thing that’s required here is for the agency to find a backbone (and) recommit to what they know works.”

Benjamin acknowledged that it has been a struggle for the agency to stay on top of the five-year status assessments required for all the endangered species. But despite the delay in the red wolf review, he said, it’s not as if the management issues with the wild population were unknown and unaddressed.

One of the more controversial aspects of red wolf management is an ongoing debate on whether the red wolf is distinct enough as a species to deserve protection. Critics contend that the animals are little more than mutts, “coywolves” that are coyote hybrids.

Last month, Congress directed the agency to work with an independent organization to determine whether the red wolf’s taxonomy represents a separate species.

What complicates matters with canids – dogs, foxes, coyotes, jackals and wolves – is that they interbreed. Whatever the master canid started as, over the centuries its line has split and come back together numerous times.

So just as modern humans, some more than others, have Neanderthal genes, wolves also have complex genetics. The species status assessment details three unsettled hypotheses for the origins of the red wolf: ancient gray wolf-coyote hybrid; recent gray wolf-coyote hybrid; or coyote evolved to divergent lineage. Different studies and different experts have come to different conclusions, or none at all.

“So it’s hard to sort these lineages,” Benjamin said. “By the time anybody got around to studying the red wolves, there were very few of them left. Putting the puzzle back together is very difficult, because we’re missing so many pieces to start with.”

The agency is also studying what other places the red wolves could be re-introduced, Benjamin said, which presents another challenge.

Since the law requires the red wolves to be managed in their historical habitat – the southeastern U.S. – they can’t be relocated to, say, Wyoming. But wolves prefer very rural landscapes with few people and few roads, a hard find in the eastern U.S. Coyotes, meanwhile, have moved into wolf territory as well as suburban neighborhoods.

But Benjamin, a veteran wildlife manager, is not despairing for the wolves’ future, although he recognizes it’s a heavy lift for conservation.

“We know more now than when we did the last five-year review,” Benjamin said. “But people working together can find ways to overcome these challenges in areas where people live and where wolves live.”

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• USFWS Red Wolf Recovery Program

RALEIGH — A key U.S. Senate committee has asked the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Agency to end its Red Wolf Recovery Program in North Carolina, The Charlotte Observer reported.

The move, which came at the urging of Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., is part of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s $32 billion spending bill for the Department of Interior and environmental agencies released last week. Tillis had previously recommended the program be ended and wrote the provision included in the bill.

The only remaining red wolves in the wild are those from a captive population released in North Carolina in 1987, seven years after red wolves were declared extinct in the wild.

The program has met opposition from private landowners in northeast North Carolina. Tillis told a U.S. House committee last year that more than 500 private landowners had asked that the federal government keep wolves off their land.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has not said it would end the program. But last year the agency proposed changes that would allow it to move wild wolves into its captive-breeding program, which holds about 200 wolves. The changes would limit wolves to federal land in Dare County alone instead of the largely private land they now roam in five counties.

A public comment period on the proposal that ended in July generated more than 12,000 responses with overwhelming support for keeping wild wolves in North Carolina.

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• Rolling Back the Red Wolf Recovery Effort

This story has been edited to reflect that killing coyotes on private lands in the recovery area requires a permit.

MANTEO – The fate of endangered red wolves could be settled by year’s end, when wildlife managers are expected to complete reconsideration of the endangered predator’s management in the wilds of northeastern North Carolina.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is seeking suggestions from people residing in the five-county red wolf recovery area – parts of Hyde, Tyrrell, Washington, Beaufort and Dare counties – to address conflicts and promote cooperation. As part of its process set out under the Endangered Species Act, the agency is reviewing management strategies and assessing alternatives in order to draft a revised management rule.

“These rules that we’re operating under were written in ’95,” Pete Benjamin, field supervisor in Fish and Wildlife’s Raleigh office, said at a scoping meeting held last week in Manteo. “A lot has changed, so that’s why they’re being rewritten.”

Most detrimental to the wolves is the change in their population: From a peak of about 150 red wolves in 2005, there are 40 or fewer wolves now roaming the 1.7 million acres in the recovery area. But other changes also have not helped the wolves. When coyotes arrived on the Albemarle Peninsula in the 1990s, the neighborhood for wolves went downhill quickly. Coyotes look similar to red wolves, making it easy to mistake one for the other. It is illegal to kill red wolves and a permit is required to kill coyotes on private lands. That’s the result of a May 2014 federal court settlement that blocks authorization of coyote hunting — including at night — in the recovery area.

Since October 2016, there have been eight known wolf deaths: five from gunshots, one from poison, one from a vehicle strike and one from natural causes.

One of the more serious and worsening issues is that wolves will mate with coyotes, creating a problem with hybridization and questions about whether wolves are even genetically wolf enough to warrant protection.

Meanwhile, conflicts have increased with private property owners and the number of wolves killed by gunshots and poison has increased. But perhaps the most challenging problem the wolves face is the lack of public support from the owners of the private property the wolves inhabit. Landowners have complained about the animals depleting the numbers of deer for hunters, killing pets and livestock and endangering and scaring people.

“We’re looking for ideas,” Benjamin told the packed meeting room at the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge headquarters.

Another meeting was also held in Swan Quarter earlier in the week.

Under the Endangered Species Act, a review of designated species is supposed to be done every five years, but the most recent review of red wolf management was in 2007. In September, the agency proposed changes that, among other things, would limit the wolves’ range to Alligator River refuge land and the Navy bombing range in Dare County.

In addition to reviewing how the wolf population is managed in northeastern North Carolina, Benjamin said, the wildlife service is also considering potential re-introduction sites. A species status assessment – a snapshot of the likelihood, or not, of species recovery – is also planned, as well as a revision of the Endangered Species Act rule that governs what the law calls “the non-essential, experimental” population of red wolves.

Either an environment assessment or a more complicated and lengthier environment impact statement will be conducted, but Benjamin said he does not know when that will be decided. When the proposed rule is completed, it will give a detailed picture of updated management options. Portions of the updated reviews also may be released prior to publication of the rule.

By any account, it’s been a conservation roller coaster for the red wolf. The species had been declared extinct in the wild at the time four pairs of captive wolves were transported in 1987 from Texas to Alligator River. Complex and innovative management strategies, including placement of captive newborn pups in dens with wild pups, led to steady increases in the wild population. Even after coyotes encroached on wolves, a “placeholder” method that involved using a sterile coyote to keep out other coyotes was used successfully to protect wolf territory.

But budget shortfalls, increased controversy and numerous other challenges have forced the wildlife service to re-think its wolf recovery program.

“The way we’re doing things is very labor intensive,” Benjamin said. “We’ve got to manage things wolf-by-wolf.”

Radio collars have been placed on 26 of the wolves, and their locations are monitored once or twice a week by airplane. Dens are also still inspected, but no longer are newborn captive pups placed in a wild litter.

The wolf recovery program costs about $1.2 million a year, Benjamin said.

Conflicting Opinions

Jett Ferebee, a Tyrrell County landowner and Greenville developer who has led the charge against the red wolf conservation program since at least 2013 – most publicly on the online forum nchuntandfish.com – attended the meeting in Manteo, but declined to be interviewed afterward.

In the past, Ferebee has accused the wildlife service of breaking the law by not permanently removing trespassing “coywolves” from private property.

Benjamin said in a recent interview that the most recent DNA analysis in 2014 has shown that red wolves have about 4 percent coyote DNA. But red wolf genetics is not settled science, and the agency is continuing to work with researchers on the issue.

From the beginning of the recovery program, there have been conflicting opinions about whether the red wolf is indeed a separate species, or just a wolf version of a mutt. As it is now, Benjamin said, it is listed as endangered under the ESA, and the wildlife service is obligated to protect it until and if the status is changed.

“It’s kind of something that overarches everything to do with the wolf populations,” he said.

Public sentiment on the wolves, he added, ranges the full spectrum in attitudes between supporter and opponent. The agency’s goal, he said, is to hear reasonable ideas from landowners, hunters, tourism folks, area residents and environmental groups on ways to make wolf conservation more effective and to help differentiate between wolves and coyotes. It is also important to better engage the public so that wolves may be judged to be a benefit in communities where they exist, he said, rather than a burden – “anything to make the program more efficient, effective and successful.”

Even as a veteran wildlife manager, Benjamin sees red wolf conservation as more difficult than most. There’s the usual antipathy toward the federal government, coupled with state versus federal control, then multiplied by private property versus public policy versus environmental conservation friction. But bringing wolves back into environments where humans live can be a tough sell.

“More so than most (issues), when you’re talking endangered predators and their re-introduction,” Benjamin said, “it is particularly complicated.”

D.J. Sharp of Kill Devil Hills worked in 2009-10 as a caretaker for the wolves in Alligator River. Sharp is rooting for the wolves, but he acknowledges that success will not come easy.

“I feel that the people involved are very conscientious and have done as good a job as can be done,” Sharp said after the meeting. “Obviously, the public needs to support this for it to work.”

But under the circumstances, Sharp said, he thinks it will be “very challenging” to restore the wolf population in the current recovery area.

“A friend of mine has talked to some of the hunters,” Sharp said. “He said they told him if they had the opportunity to shoot one (a wolf) illegally, they would do so without hesitation.”

Joe O’Grady, owner of Coastal Kayak Touring Co. of Kitty Hawk, which offers tours in Alligator River refuge, said he sees the red wolves as an asset to an area that prides itself on its rich natural resources. Still, coyotes may have ruined the wolves’ newfound chance of survival.

“Most people root for the underdog,” O’Grady said. “The coyotes moved in and it became a big human conflict.”

For O’Grady, the way to help the wolves is to “stop shooting them.”

“Educate people,” he said. “They’re not weakening the deer pack. If anything, they make the herd healthier.”

Kim Wheeler, the executive director of the nonprofit Red Wolf Coalition in Columbia in Tyrrell County, said she is concerned about the wolves’ recovery, and she wants to trust that Fish and Wildlife sees the wolf population as a value to the ecosystem.

“I think at this point in time, it’s going to take everybody’s collective voices to make this work,” she said. “I think it’s important to engage the stakeholders. I like to think we can all have a rational conversation.”

At the same time, she said she sees nothing wrong with resetting the program.

“I just know we can’t go back in time,” Wheeler said. “I guess the simple answer is we need to find a way for these animals to stay in the wild. We owe it them.”

Comment on Proposed Rule

Public comments will be accepted through July 24. So far, Benjamin said, there had been 2,100 comments filed online. Once the proposed rule is completed – expected by the end of the year – there will be another public meeting and another opportunity to comment.

To submit comments:

• Electronically: Go to the Federal eRulemaking Portal: http://www.regulations.gov. Search for FWS-R4-ES-2017-0006, which is the docket number for this action. You may submit a comment by clicking on “Comment Now!”
• By hard copy: Submit by U.S. mail or hand-delivery to: Public Comments Processing, Attn: FWS-R4-ES-2017-0006; Division of Policy, Performance, and Management Programs; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Headquarters, MS: BPHC, 5275 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church, VA 22041–3803.

Comments will be posted on http://www.regulations.gov

The service seeks comments and suggestions specifically on the following:

• The appropriate size and scope of the non-essential, experimental population area.
• Contribution of the non-essential, experimental population to recovery goals for the red wolf.
• Tools for population management.
• Management strategies to address hybridization with coyotes.
• Appropriate provisions for “take” of red wolves.
• Protocols for red wolves that leave the non-essential, experimental population area, including, but not limited to, requests for removal of animals from private lands.

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• Red Wolf Recovery Program

Last of two parts

NORTHEASTERN NORTH CAROLINA — Not so long ago, in the swampy forests of this part of the state, rare red wolves made their home in dens hidden among wax myrtle bushes and pine trees. Females had pups. When people would come by, the mother would hide, waiting. When the people left, she would return, and there would be a few more babies to feed.  Remarkably, that’s what she did.

Biologists with the experimental U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Red Wolf Recovery Program had achieved wildlife management magic by enticing a wild wolf – with a sprinkling of her offspring’s urine – to accept pups that were not her own. It was a fortunate result for the pups, since one alternative to adoption was being eaten.

By “cross-fostering”, the zoo-born pups added their genes to the once-extinct wild population that the recovery team was working to re-establish in northeastern North Carolina.

Back then, in the 1990s and 2000s, photographs of adorable newborn wolf pups that were being introduced to their new, wild mothers filled pages of newspapers and magazines, along with glowing articles about red wolf management successes.

That was before complaints about wolves attacking livestock, family pets and game animals or just lurking around private property became frequent at public meetings, and before some scientific studies stirred doubts about whether red wolves were more coyote than wolf. It was before mailboxes of politicians and bureaucrats were inundated with constituents’ impassioned objections to the wolves.

Reliance on Good Will

DeLene Beeland, author of “The Secret World of Red Wolves: The Fight to Save America’s Other Wolf,” still remembers how sweet it was to hold a warm wolf pup before it was placed in the wild den, and how stunning the landscape was where the wolf family settled in for a time.

“One of the zoo-born pups wanders from the puppy pile and crawls on jerky legs to the front den wall,”Beeland wrote. “We watch as he tries to haul his feeble limbs up the soil embankment … Having stretched himself as far as he can, he loses his balance and careens to one side, then crawls back to the swarming puppy pile.”

Beeland, who did her field visits for her book in 2009-11, said that at that time, management was going well, and most of the landowners Beeland spoke with seemed to be tolerant of the wolves.

In retrospect, she said in recent interview, it may have helped if biologists had done more outreach to landowners to counter what she believes has been “an aggressive campaign of misinformation” about the wolf project from a vocal group of opponents.

“I just think it’s incredibly sad what’s happened,” she said, “because the red wolf program over the years has relied on the good will of landowners.”

Red wolves have been promoted as an iconic symbol of the wealth of natural resources in northeastern North Carolina, serving as a lure for eco-tourism. Polls showed public support for the wolf recovery program.

But as early as the mid-1990s, landowners in Washington and Hyde counties rejected expansion of the wolf program into Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, resulting in both counties passing resolutions in opposition.

Jett Ferebee, a Greenville developer and a Tyrrell County landowner, has been a relentless critic of the wildlife service’s management of the wolves, especially when they encroach on his property. He argues that the proliferation of coyotes in the region has resulted in a huge population of hybrid “coywolves” that don’t warrant protection as an endangered species. He also contends that the program is a “$30 million tax-funded violation of the Administrative Procedures Act,” and that the federal agency has broken the law by not permanently removing trespassing wolves.

“I resent that my friends and family no longer want to go to our farm and spend time hunting and enjoying the outdoors,” Ferebee wrote to a Fish and Wildlife official in 2013, a correspondence posted on the nchuntandfish.com forum. “I resent that not only our deer population, but also our rabbit population has been decimated. The turkeys are likely next.”

Ferebee did not respond to attempts to reach him for comment for this story.

In the years since Ferebee bought 2,000 acres in Tyrrell in 1996, he has led the charge in opposition to the wolf program, demanding action from politicians and agency officials to remove the animals. In early 2014, for the first time, Fish and Wildlife issued a “take” permit to Ferebee that authorized him to catch or kill red wolves on his property.

A Federal-State Agreement

In 2013, Fish and Wildlife and the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission agreed to work together on red wolf issues. Around that time, Leo Miranda, assistant regional director for ecological services in Fish and Wildlife’s Atlanta office, assured Ferebee that the agency would work with him to find solutions that would meet private landowners’ and conservationists’ goals.

It wasn’t long after then that David Rabon, coordinator of the recovery program in Alligator River, was informed that he would be transferred. Instead, Rabon, who had the position since 2009, left the agency.

Rabon, now a scientific adviser for the Endangered Wolf Center in Missouri, said in an interview that Miranda appeared to be making promises to landowners without coordinating with staff on the ground. Ultimately, Rabon said, he was seen as an obstacle.

“That emboldened a few of those people,” he said of the opposition, “and it kind of snowballed from there.”

Before he left, Rabon said he was working on new regulations for managing the species that would reinforce the successful placeholder and cross-fostering strategies, and the team was looking for other suitable locations. But updated management would also have to address human-caused mortality, primarily gunshots, which he sees as the biggest threat to the red wolves survival in the wild.  Strategies would involve analysis of the season, location, time of day, and ages of wolves killed.

“Then you can start exploring solutions,” he said.

As the wolf population increased in the recovery area, Rabon said that the wolves themselves were exerting their own master predator controls on the coyotes. But as more wolves were killed, that balance was altered, and the coyotes gained momentum. And when there aren’t wolves to mate with, a coyote will do.

Rabon said he believes that the current proposal to restrict wolf territory would be no different than holding the animals in a large enclosure. And criticism of the red wolf recovery being dependent on conservation management ignores the reality that even robust populations of bear and deer require management.

“There are few species that are not conservation reliant,” he said.

Cross-fostering and release of wild wolves were suspended in 2015 while the agency re-evaluated the program. The Wildlife Management Institute had issued its report and recommendations in 2014.

‘Responding to the Public’

In September, Fish and Wildlife announced that the wolves would be managed only in the Alligator River refuge area. Other wolves would be removed from the rest of the recovery area to the captive population.

“We’re committed to the red wolf recovery and that’s what we’re trying to do,” said Pete Benjamin, field supervisor in Fish and Wildlife’s Raleigh office. “We’re responding to the public – all that has to be part of red wolf conservation.”

According to agency rules, Benjamin said, if landowners don’t want wolves on their property, the wildlife service is responsible for removing them. If that is not possible, the agency could issue a permit for the wolf to be killed.

There is currently a legal injunction against removal of the wolves.

One of the central reasons cited for the agency’s downsizing of the program that Cindy Dohner, director of the agency’s Southeast Region, announced in September is that the population of 200 red wolves kept in 40 zoos across the country is “not secure” and that if the agency continued with the status quo the captive population would be lost.

But earlier this month, the authors of the population viability report that served as a basis for Dohner’s statement wrote a letter informing Fish and Wildlife that their report had been misinterpreted. In the worst-case scenario, they wrote, the data showed that the captive population had less than a 1 percent chance of extinction in the next 125 years.

“Those things are complicated,” Benjamin explained. “We very much appreciate what they pointed out.”

The agency plans to analyze all available scientific information to determine future conservation planning, he said.

That assessment, he said, will include scrutiny of recent reports of genetic analysis that found red wolves were more than 75 percent coyote.

“Any canid can breed with any canid and produce viable offspring,” Benjamin said. “So the question of ‘what is a red wolf?’ has been around as long as there have been red wolves.”

Because the red wolves in the program are characterized as a “nonessential experimental” population, Benjamin said, there is more flexibility in developing tools to work with landowners and communities. The current rules written in 1986 have not been updated to reflect the current situation.

“We’ve got to work with the state – they manage coyotes – and eastern North Carolina is primarily private lands,” he said. “It’s going to take time and working with other people.”

The state Wildlife Resources Commission is working cooperatively with U.S. Fish and Wildlife on the wolf issue, said Gordon Myers, the commission’s executive director.

“We have a very solid working relationship,” he said.

During a hearing in February of the House Select Committee on Wildlife Resources, Myers said that the red wolf program is unsustainable and incapable of being contained on federal land. On that basis, he requested that Fish and Wildlife discontinue the program and declare the red wolf extinct in the wild.

But in a telephone interview late Tuesday, Myers said the commission is not opposed to the wolf recovery program; it is opposed to what it considers to be the unauthorized release of wild wolves beyond the limit of 12 wolves the wildlife service was permitted to release when the experimental program was established. Since then, he said, there have been 165 wolves released into the recovery area – 130 from the captive-breeding program, and 64 of them on private land.

The agency has acknowledged the releases went beyond the scope of what it said it would do, Myers said, and it promised the commission that it would stop additional releases.

“One of the goals was that the animals would occupy federal lands,” Myers said. But the wolves prefer the easy pickings of prey found around private farmland. That’s one reason the commission believes the proper solution would be to entirely remove the wild population of wolves to captivity. Limiting the wolf population to public lands will not work, he said, and conflicts would inevitably continue.

In addition, he said, the exploding population of coyotes makes hybridization of the red wolves impossible to control.

Although he agreed that sterilizing placeholder coyotes has been effective to some degree, he characterized the strategy as an unrealistic management solution.

Between 2002 and 2012, Myers said, the numbers of coyotes trapped statewide increased 2,600 percent. Coyote harvest is not required to be reported, but he estimated it is about 25,000 to 35,000 animals a year.

Myers denied that there has been political pressure on the commission to work toward eliminating red wolves.

“I think a fairer assessment,” he said, “is there has been feedback from multiple perspectives, both for and against the red wolf experiment in northeastern North Carolina.”

To Learn More

• U.S. Fish and Wildlife announcement on significant program changes
• Read the population viability assessment team’s response to U.S. Fish and Wildlife

Read Part One: Rolling Back the Red Wolf Recovery Effort

First of two parts

NORTHEASTERN NORTH CAROLINA — As the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service’s red wolf recovery program here marked its 25^th anniversary in 2012, it was basking in nationwide accolades as a groundbreaking conservation success. Just four years later, it is teetering on the edge of failure, a turn of fate fanned by politics, mistaken identity and public ill will.

“There’s something going on and I can’t figure out why the agency has been so willing to backtrack,” said Ron Sutherland, a Durham-based scientist with the Wildlands Network. “The red wolf program in the Fish and Wildlife Service has basically been drawn and quartered.”

Sutherland said that there has been no response from the agency to a petition submitted in July that was signed by 500,000 people in support of wild red wolves, which are protected under the Endangered Species Act.

Critics say the program has been a failure from the outset and that the Fish and Wildlife Service had released wolves on private property without the written permission of landowners.

Red wolves had been declared extinct in the wild when four pairs of captive wolves were transferred from Texas to the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in 1987. Through intensive management tactics that included sneaking captive-bred pups into dens with wild-born pups, the population grew steadily. At its height in 2005-07, there were about 130 red wolves in the forested recovery area spanning 1.7 million acres of public and private land in Hyde, Dare, Tyrrell, Washington and Beaufort counties.

Today, there are just 45 wolves remaining in the wilds of northeastern North Carolina, as well as 200 or so in captivity, and Fish and Wildlife has sharply scaled back the recovery program.

In September, the agency announced, after a two-year review of the program, that by 2017 it planned to reduce wolf territory to an area in Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge and the military bombing range in Dare County. Wolves outside that range would be removed to captive populations that reside in numerous zoos.

“It was disheartening to see how they want to pull the animals back to almost where they started the program,” said Kim Wheeler, executive director of the Tyrrell County-based Red Wolf Coalition, a nonprofit education and advocacy group that started in 1997. “You can only have so many wolves in so much space – everybody needs their own room and their own territory.”

Red wolf recovery would require changes to “secure” the wild and captive populations, the agency said. In addition, it acknowledged that there are questions about whether the wolves’ genetics qualify for it to be classified under the Endangered Species Act.

Shortly after the agency’s announcement, U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle issued a preliminary injunction that forbade removal of wolves from private property, unless it can be shown there is a threat to humans, pets or livestock.  In issuing the order, Boyle accused the wildlife service of failing to adequately protect the wolves.

“What had been happening lately is that individual landowners have required wolves to be removed from their property, because they don’t like them,” said Jason Rylander, senior attorney for Defenders of Wildlife, one of the plaintiffs. “They can’t be removed just because they’re present on the property.”

An earlier lawsuit ruled on by the same judge led to a ban in 2014 of nighttime coyote hunting in the recovery area, a practice that conservation groups blamed for a spike in wolf gunshot deaths.

The end result of the recent injunction is that while it is under effect, the wildlife service’s plan to remove wolves in all but the Dare County and Alligator River area will not be allowed, essentially forestalling its plan.

The program’s path from bold experiment, to successful innovation, to despair for its future is perhaps more dramatic, and compressed, than most accounts of wildlife-conservation efforts.

Twenty years after the first red wolves were released onto Alligator River lands, more than 100 wolves were inhabitants, and the program was credited as a model for other successful efforts.

“That was the prototype wolf-recovery program that gave legs to the wolf-recovery programs in Yellowstone and the northern Rockies, as well as for the Mexican wolf, Walter Medvid, executive director of the Minneapolis-based International Wolf Center, said in a 2007 article in The Virginian-Pilot.

Medvid said that top predators such as wolves are good for ecological stability and help keep prey populations healthy and vigorous.

Smaller than gray wolves but bigger than coyotes, red wolves weigh about 55 to 85 pounds and are brown with patches of red behind their ears.  Long ago, they ranged from southern New England to Florida and as far west as central Missouri and Texas before being gradually hunted to near-extinction. By the 1970s, fewer than 100 red wolves were believed to exist on the Gulf Coast.

An analysis of species characteristics was done by the wildlife service before 14 wolves were selected to begin a captive-breeding program. Four pairs of those wolves were chosen for release in 1987 in Alligator River, an area with natural boundaries and plenty of prey.

Sparsely developed, heavily wooded northeastern North Carolina seemed as if it would be perfect habitat for red wolves, a shy creature not known for aggression toward humans. But the red wolf preys on deer and roams private as well as public land. Conservationists may regard the wolf as an important part of the ecosystem, but to a significant number of landowners and hunters, the wolf is little more than an interloper and a competitor. And to the wolf’s misfortune, it looks very similar to a coyote, which arrived in the region not long after the wolf’s re-introduction. Shooting wolves is illegal; hunting coyotes is permitted.

Wolves will mate with coyotes if their mate is killed, exacerbating a threat to the species: hybridization. But the wildlife service’s recovery team developed an effective tactic that used a sterilized coyote to serve as a “placeholder” in keeping other coyotes out of its territory. Before it was discontinued, the measure was proving to curtail the problem with diluting the red wolf genes with those of coyotes. The controversial issue of whether the red wolf is a separate species is still being debated by the wildlife service.

Another successful method the recovery team devised is putting similarly aged captive-bred pups in with other pups in a wild den, after sprinkling them with a little urine from the wild pups.  To the team’s joy, the mothers accepted the pups as their own, helping to ensure the genetic viability of the species.

But from the beginning, gunshot mortalities had been a growing issue with red wolf management. By 2003, 28 wolves had been shot. Between 2004 and 2011, another 52 wolves had been shot, despite possible penalties of up to a year in prison and a fine of $100,000. When coyote hunting was expanded in 2012 to nighttime hours, shooting deaths of wolves increased again.

But when the judge later restricted coyote hunting, the political winds seem to turn in a fury toward the wolves. Pages filled with nasty comments about the wolves started cropping up on internet hunting forums. Legislators started hearing demands from constituents to do something about the wolves.

In January 2015, the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission adopted a resolution asking the wildlife service to end the red wolf project, and another resolution asking the wildlife service to remove all “unauthorized releases” of wolves and their offspring from private land.

U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., is among those who have called for eliminating the red wolf recovery program.

Tillis, speaking in September at a House Committee on Natural Resources hearing on the program, said the program had failed to meet population recovery goals for the red wolf while negatively affecting North Carolina landowners and the populations of several other native species. He said 514 private landowners and farmers had sent individual requests to the Fish and Wildlife Service to not allow red wolves on their land.

“Before we do anything more in North Carolina, I think it makes the most sense to shut the program down to figure out how to do it right and build some credibility with the landowners,” Tillis said during the hearing. “There is a less than respectful history of dialogue between folks in North Carolina and the Fish and Wildlife Service. This is going to be an issue my office will be focused on for as long as I’m a U.S. senator.”

Wheeler, of the Red Wolf Coalition, said the issue was more political than she ever thought it would be. “Certainly, our red wolves are getting caught in that political mess,” she said.

To Learn More

• U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Red Wolf Recovery Program
• North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission’s red wolf resolution

Thursday: Understanding the opposition 

A U.S. District Judge said yesterday in a preliminary ruling that U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials fail to protect the only remaining population of red wolves.

Judge Terrence Boyle said federal officials “fail to adequately provide for the protection of red wolves and may in fact jeopardize the population’s survival in the wild.”

In granting a preliminary injunction, Boyle blocked the government from removing the wolves that live in eastern North Carolina from private property unless it can be demonstrated that the wolves are a danger to humans, pets or livestock.

Red wolves, which were once on the brink of extinction, were reintroduced to the wild in 1987 after a breeding and captivity program attempted to save their populations.

The wild population of red wolves since has fallen from 130 in 2006 to about 45 today.

The ruling follows a plan announced by federal official several weeks ago to shrink the red wolves’ territory from its current five-county area to a wildlife reserve in Dare County in 2017. Wolves found outside of this reserve would be captured and removed. The temporary injunction would block such plans until further notice.

The case was brought forward by the Southern Environmental Law Center on behalf of Defenders of Wildlife, the Red Wolf Coalition and the Animal Welfare Institute.

The conservation groups argued that the federal government had not done enough to protect the species by twice giving property owners permission to shoot wolves. In 2014, a wolf was shot and killed by a property owner.

Boyle said that it is likely the federal department will be found in violation of the Endangered Species Act in trial due to the population’s quick decline between 2006 and 2016.

To Learn More

• Read the Associated Press story
• U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Red Wolf Recovery Program

ATLANTA — The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Monday it will begin to dramatically scale back its controversial red wolf recovery program.

The agency said in a news release it will begin implementing a series of actions based on scientific information and divided public opinions gathered during the past 21 months. The plan is to limit the area that the endangered wolves are able to roam freely to a federal wildlife refuge and adjacent land in Dare County by the end of 2017.

The move is in response to complaints by private landowners in the existing five-county recovery area, but wildlife conservation groups criticized the decision.

“This is a devastating blow to the world’s most endangered wolf. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has abandoned its obligations to protect and recover the red wolf. This retreat flies in the face of what the majority of people in North Carolina want,” Defenders of Wildlife President and CEO Jamie Rappaport Clark said in a statement on the group’s website.

Plans are to limit the population in the wild to the Dare County Bombing Range and Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, where the agency said stable packs exist on federal land. They also plan to find other locations in North Carolina or the southeastern U.S. where red wolves historically roamed until they were listed as extinct in the wild in 1980.

Red wolves bred in captivity were released into Alligator National Wildlife Refuge starting in 1987.

“This proposed action will change the scope of and goals for the experimental population and is expected to be completed by December 2017,” the agency said, and it will undergo an environmental review and a public comment period.

The agency said it will next determine where potential new sites exist for additional experimental wild populations by October 2017, and ensure they will comply with environmental rules and include public engagement.

A full evaluation of the program was undertaken two years ago after evidence surfaced that dozens of captive-bred wolves were released mistakenly on private lands in parts of the five counties and interbreeding with coyotes became rampant.

Some 200 red wolves are currently held in captive breeding facilities across the United States, including one at the refuge.

While listed as an endangered species, the wolves that have been released are classified by the agency as a “non-essential, experimental population”.

State wildlife regulators called on the Fish and Wildlife Service last year to end the reintroduction of the red wolf in the region and to remove all wolves that were released on private lands.

The release program was suspended in June 2015, while existing wolves were allowed to continue roaming over an area covering 1.7 million acres of Dare, Hyde, Tyrrell, Washington and Beaufort counties.

Coyote hunting was restricted in that area after a lawsuit by environmental groups in reaction to at least eight incidents in which red wolves were shot and not reported, which violated state and federal regulations.

The announcement Monday comes after a two-year, two-step evaluation of the entire red wolf recovery program, according to the federal agency.

An initial report by the Wildlife Management Institute in June 2015 criticized how the Fish and Wildlife Service interacted with residents and property owners surrounding the refuge in the five-county area after the program got underway.

The same findings praised Fish and Wildlife for the science behind the program and noted that it proved to some degree that the red wolf could survive in coastal eastern North Carolina.

Earlier this month, the final results of the study were submitted to the agency.

“The service commissioned these numerous studies, and the updated research and information coming from a diverse group of experts was invaluable to us in making the management decisions we’re announcing today,” said Cindy Dohner, the service’s Southeast Regional Director.

Fish and Wildlife said it will move quickly to secure the captive population of about 200 red wolves because it is not sustainable in its current configuration, with just 29 breeding pairs in captivity.

A five-year status review for the red wolf will also be completed by October 2017, examining whether the red wolf is a valid, list-able entity and whether it is appropriately classified as an endangered species.

To Learn More

• Red wolf program review
• Read the service’s decision memorandum

COLUMBIA — Hidden cameras in rural  northeastern North Carolina have captured thousands of images of animals coexisting in red wolf habitat, scenes that conservationists say shows that the endangered wolves have been unfairly blamed for decimating some wildlife populations, especially deer.

Photographs taken by 22 motion-detection cameras set up over the last year in selected areas of Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge and Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge include images of bears, deer, coyotes, bobcats, red wolves, raccoons, wild turkeys, possums and foxes as well as an occasional squirrel or river otter.  The equipment, which has an infrared light for night shots, captures the animals going about their business in the fields and forests: playing, roaming, fighting, hunting.

There are charming close-ups of bear snouts and bear paws; ghostly images of coyotes, foxes and wolves in the night, their eyes reflective circles; action shots of deer bounding through farmland at sunset; and Disney-like scenes of mother bears with her cubs cruising down dirt roads and galumphing through forest clearings.

Conservationists maintain that the diversity and the large number of the creatures in as many as 10,000 snapshots, available on Internet photo site Flickr, belie assertions from opponents of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s red wolf recovery program that the wolves have diminished the numbers of deer in the wild.

“The challenge is how to get the public, especially on the coast, to take a look with an open mind and see what’s going on with the wildlife out there,” says Ron Sutherland, a conservation scientist in the Triangle work works for the Seattle-based nonprofit Wildlands Network. “So far what we’ve seen is there’s deer at every site. There’s no sign that the deer have disappeared.”

Started in 1987 by reintroducing almost wiped-out red wolves into the wilds of Alligator River, today the once-lauded recovery program is likely as endangered as the wolves. Unpopular and criticized as ineffective and a waste of money, the program has been scaled down and management of dens and breeding have been eliminated.

Numerous property owners in the recovery area — 1.7 million acres in Hyde, Dare, Tyrrell, Washington and Beaufort counties — complain that the wolves attack their small animals and are easily confused with the even more menacing coyote. Most damningly, opponents of the recovery program, which include the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, contend that the animals are a coyote-wolf hybrid and don’t deserve protection as a distinct species.

A forum on nchuntandfish.com has hundreds of comments that detail vivid disrespect for the program.

Calling it a “taxpayer-funded scandal,” Jett Ferebee, a Tyrrell County landowner and hunter, says the wolves rendered his farm “a wasteland of hybrid coyotes.”

“This will likely be the largest wildlife disaster to ever impact the state of North Carolina,” Ferebee writes on the forum. “Our wildlife in NC is dependent on not allowing the continuation of this red wolf experiment gone horribly wrong.”

There are an estimated 45-60 red wolves remaining in the red wolf recovery area, down from an estimated 90-110 in 2013, according to the Wildlife Service. Of the 15 mortalities in 2013, nine were from suspected or confirmed gunshots. In 2014 and 2015, there were four wolf deaths each year believed to be from gunshots, and in 2015 there was one death from poisoning.

Many attributed the spike in wolf shootings in 2013 to a change in state wildlife rules that permitted nighttime shooting of coyotes, which look similar to the larger red wolf and can be killed year round. A lawsuit was subsequently filed by conservation groups, and coyote hunting was temporarily banned the next year by a federal judge.

In a 2014 independent review requested by state wildlife officials, the Fish and Wildlife Service was lambasted for its poor handling of the recovery program and for not recognizing the effect of wolves on private property. The federal agency is currently conducting another review that will include recommendations for the future of the program.

Pete Benjamin, field supervisor at the Wildlife Service’s Raleigh office, said the report is expected to be completed by September.

The Center for Biological Diversity on March 24 filed a notice that it intends to sue the agency within 60 days over contentions that the program has been mismanaged.

In such a stew of bitter contention, Sutherland is hoping that the candid camera photographs of the animals in the wild will help the public appreciate that red wolves are an important part of a sensitive ecological balance. The goal of the project, he said, is to have more cameras installed on private property and to be able to compile data on the types of animals recorded at each location.

Each camera, which has a battery pack and a memory stick, costs about $800 fully equipped and can go several months before having to be checked.  All the thousands of photographs have been posted online, but they’ve not yet been catalogued. The images are unedited except for any person or vehicle that may happen to be go by.

Images from an additional 16 cameras in Hyde County have also been shared by the Wildlife Commission.

Eventually, Sutherland said, the network wants to be able to survey vegetation and songbirds in the habitat, and trap small mammals to learn more about the wolves’ effects on populations of rabbits and rodents.

As a part of the ecosystem, he said, the wolves, a top-of-the-food-chain creature, help control overpopulation of deer and help keep check on mesopredators such as raccoons, feral cats and possums. In turn, that helps to protect native birds, wildflowers and the forest understory.

So far, wildlife on the Albemarle peninsula has been able to recover from imbalances created by overhunting or other threats, Sutherland said.  It was only about a century ago that deer populations were severely diminished and wild turkey were almost wiped out entirely. More recently, bear populations have grown in northeastern North Carolina, while coyotes have moved aggressively into the region.

Sutherland agreed that it is a good time for the red wolf recovery program to be re-assessed. But he said that after 29 years of making its home in northeastern North Carolina, the red wolf continues to deserve protection.

“For it to go extinct again,” he said, “is heartbreaking and unnecessary.”

To Learn More

• Wildlife in Red Wolf Country photos
• Wildlife Management Institute report
• Red wolves mortality report
• Notice of intent to sue U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
• NChuntandfish.com
• Wildlands Network

Coastal Review Assistant Editor Mark Hibbs contributed to this report.

Wily, intelligent and adaptive coyotes are in all 100 counties of North Carolina and they are here to stay.

“They are set up to use the habitat,” said Chris Kent, a biologist with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission whose district includes the state’s largest coastal cities.

Chris Turner, a commission biologist in the northeastern part of the state agrees that coyotes are highly adaptable and can live in rural, suburban and even urban areas. “Being omnivorous, they can utilize many food resources, ranging from small mammals to fruit/berries to agricultural crops to dog food and table scraps,” he explained in an email.

Originally native to the grasslands and prairies west of the Mississippi River, coyotes first became permanent residents of the state’s mountains in the early 1980s. Within 30 years, they reached the Atlantic Ocean.

Although the evidence points to large populations in coastal North Carolina, they are rarely seen. “They are very wary of people and you just don’t see them very often,” Kent says.

And it may not be apparent to an untrained eye just what has been seen. At first glance, a coyote may look like a medium-sized dog or a small German shepherd, but with a more pointed muzzle and flatter forehead. They also tend to be thinner than domestic dogs, although in the winter they will look bigger because they are carrying a heavier fur coat.

Canis latrans is a remarkable species of canid. From its original habitat west, it has spread throughout North America and is found in every country of the continent.

The migration of the coyote began soon after European settlers took control of North America. Intent on creating a safe landscape to farm their fields and raise livestock, settlers hunted apex predators — wolves, cougars, bears — almost to extinction.

“It’s generally understood that there was a canid top predator,” explained Pete Benjamin, field supervisor for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s Raleigh office. “On the East Coast, cougars and the red wolf were eliminated, and coyotes have filled that niche.”

The service’s red wolf recovery program in Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in Dare and Hyde counties has brought the eastern red wolf and coyote into direct contact. In the western United States where the larger grey wolf lives with coyotes, the coyote becomes prey.

The smaller red wolf, although larger than a coyote, seems more likely to avoid interaction for the most part. “Until mating season,” said Woody Webster, site manager for the state’s Buckridge Coastal Reserve in Columbia. The Buckridge Reserve borders the federal refuge.

Typical of the genus canis, coyotes can cross breed with dogs and wolves. “When opportunity may present itself, canids, including coyotes, are physically capable of cross-breeding, “ Turner said.

Fish and Wildlife biologists, worried about crossbreeding between coyotes and red wolves, came up with what they hope is an innovative approach. “The issue of hybridization is a concern, and we’re managing the interaction between the species,” Benjamin explained.

Like all canids, coyotes are territorial, and studies have shown that sterilized coyotes retain their territorial instinct.  “We have place holders using sterilized coyotes. Sterilized coyotes will defend against other coyotes,” Benjamin said. “They’ll keep the territory from other coyotes until the wolves take over or we insert wolves (into the environment).”

No one is sure how many coyotes live along the coast. Scott Crocker has managed the state’s reserve sites along the northern coast for the past three years. “I have seen evidence pretty much since I’ve been here,” he said. “Each year there’s maybe a half dozen that I actually see. I’ve definitely seen the evidence. Scat with fur in there and we have game trail cameras at both sites.”

No one has seen a coyote at the Coastal Reserve sites along the southern coast, including at Masonboro Island, Zeke’s Island, Bald Head Woods and Bird Island, but there is evidence that they have been visiting if not living in some of the more accessible parts of the reserve, according to site employees.

Landowners often consider coyotes nuisances that can cause damage. “Unprotected poultry and livestock can . . . be harmed in some situations,” Turner wrote in his email. “Coyotes can also take small dogs that are left to range free or are left unattended.”

Because of the potential for damage to farm production and the designation as an invasive species, the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission allows the hunting of coyotes at any time throughout the state. The exception is the five counties where red wolves live — Beaufort, Dare, Hyde, Tyrrell and Washington. In those counties a special permit is required.

It is doubtful, however, that open season on coyotes is an effective means of controlling the population. Wildlife biologists point to the reproduction characteristic of coyotes that makes controlling the population so difficult.  Typically a coyote litter will be five to seven pups. If a coyote population in an area becomes too dense, the litter size drops. If the population is thinned either through disease or hunting, litter size increases — and may increase substantially — doubling in size over the average. Additionally, female coyotes will go into heat at a younger age.

This is a well-documented phenomena and one that the Wildlife Commission seems to address in its 2012 report on fox and coyote populations. “In all cases, the use of bounties has been an ineffective and inefficient tool for controlling coyote populations,” the study authors wrote.

Although there have been no systematic population studies of statewide or regional coyote population, that report offers indications of how widespread coyote populations are in North Carolina. A little more than 4,000 animals were killed by hunters in 2007-08, the report notes. Two years later, that number had more than doubled to more than 10,000.

Other animals have had to adapt to what is apparently a very healthy coyote population in eastern North Carolina, Turner wrote. For instance, the populations of those that compete with coyotes, like red foxes, have declined.

“Some small mammal species may now have another predator to deal with, resulting in increased mortality during the year,” Turner continued. “Increased mortality of some species, especially those small mammals that may destroy the nests of some ground-nesting birds can actually be beneficial for other native species.”

UNC-TV’s “NC Now” examines a trend where coyotes are becoming more city creatures instead of remaining in rural communities in search of food. The change in venue has Charlotte residents concerned about their safety but officials say people should be taking greater precautions with their pets.

I’m sitting on wet sand inside of Cape Lookout Bight. A pair of 10×42 binoculars rest upon my knee, and the sun has just dipped below the horizon. An artist’s palette of pastel color unfurls across the sky with perfect symmetry reflected in the waters below. This is the kind of idyllic postcard moment that marketing wizards conjure up for would-be tourists across the Northeast. Serenity. Romance. Beauty. They would probably have a couple glasses of red wine strategically placed in the composition. But there is one small detail from this scene they would certainly leave out of the story: the fact that I’m watching the dorsal fin of a shark ply the waters just feet in front of me.

Sharks dominated the national news throughout the month of July thanks to a slew of attacks along the coast of North Carolina this summer. Speculation has run wild, of course, and stories ranging from perfect storm scenarios to exploding populations have made it into the media. As one researcher from UNC’s Institute of Marine Science explained to me, however, “most of those reporting on these events are unburdened by actual facts.” Whatever those facts may be, the bombardment of all things sharks in the media has culminated in this moment for me right here, right now, on a secluded beach at dusk hanging out with predators.

In all honesty, I have no idea what species of shark it is cruising these shallows at dusk. I just know that compared to the three others I see, this is the largest. Judging from the distance between its dorsal fin and tail, I estimate its length at about 5 feet. For the uninitiated, this may seem large, but in reality, it’s not.

Along our coast, big sharks, or what researchers call the great sharks, can range from 6 to 20 feet in length. These are the top dogs if you will, the apex predators of our corner of the blue wilderness we call the oceans. Most have names that you know: names like hammerhead, tiger and bull, to list a few. These are the sharks that make headlines, the ones kids go crazy about at aquariums, and the sharks that now face the immediate possibility of extinction – an inconvenient fact that was largely absent from the media feeding frenzy.

For more than four decades now, the UNC Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City has been engaged in the longest-running study of sharks in the United States. From spring to fall, every two weeks, a small team of researchers travel off the coast of Shackleford Banks to catch sharks. Soaking longlines like commercial fisherman, the biologists are able to capture a multitude of different species that are feeding at various depths in the water column. This location is ideal for getting a snapshot of what is going on along the coast as it sits within something of a bottleneck along the sharks’ migratory range. In other words, the data collected here can give us an understanding of shark populations from Cape Cod to Cape Canaveral. And there are 43 years’ worth of data to back it all up.

The results? Harrowing. Populations of great sharks across the board have collapsed: sandbar sharks, 87 percent decline; blacktip sharks, 93 percent decline; tiger sharks, 97 percent decline; scalloped hammerheads, 98 percent decline; and bull, dusky and smooth hammerhead, 99 percent declines. Another long-term study out of Virginia concludes that sand tigers have also declined by 99 percent.

Keystone Species

This a problem for us – let alone the sharks. You see, the great sharks are keystone species. Their presence impacts entire marine ecosystems through a process that conservation biologists call trophic cascades. It’s kind of like Ronald Reagan’s trickle-down economics – only this actually works.

Picture a pyramid. At the top sits the shark, the apex predator. Below that on the next trophic level sits the shark’s main prey species. In this case, along this coast, that would be species including the cownose rays. These are what we call mesopredators. The next level down hosts the prey species of the rays. This keeps going until you make it to the very bottom of the food chain and you reach those species that obtain their energy directly from the sun. This is a trophic pyramid, a simplified depiction of the ecological pecking order. Big sharks eat rays, rays eat scallops, clams and oysters, and the bivalves in turn filter water in our estuaries.

So, what happens when you chop off the top of the pyramid?

Some 2,500 miles northwest of here is the greater Yellowstone ecosystem, and a landscape that has quite famously answered this very question. The national park that makes up the heart and soul of this place has been something of a test tube for scientists to observe and study for well over a century now. Shortly after the inception of the world’s first national park, its new managers waged a full-scale war against the apex predator of that ecosystem – the wolf. And within a few short years, the big canines were effectively wiped off the map.

For the next century, park officials watched as elk populations began to explode. This was seen as beneficial at first. People liked the elk. More elk therefore meant more of what people wanted. Hunters in the surrounding national forests were elated. But then aspen stands began to die. Willow stands that ringed the wetlands disappeared. Beaver disappeared. And the temperature of some streams and creeks began reaching levels that could not support fish in the summertime. In essence, the very fabric of an entire ecosystem began to slowly fray and unravel.

No wolves in Yellowstone equated to an unchecked population of antlered eating machines on the landscape. Favorite meals for this species are aspens and willows which predictably began to disappear. All of those grassy meadows that you see today with lazy creeks running through them are the result of overgrazing by elk. There should be willows in there. There should be beaver ponds, stands of aspens. As these critical species of trees and shrubs began to disappear, so too did the species that depended upon them such as the beaver. And beavers, more so than any other animal in the northern Rockies, create home and habitat for a multitude of other animals ranging from waterfowl to moose.

Sharks are the apex predators of our coastal ecosystem. They are the wolves of the sea. Eliminate these animals from the trophic pyramid and you release the mesopredators like cownose rays from the checks and balances that sharks once placed on their population through predation and fear. As a result, much like the increase in elk populations across Yellowstone, we have witnessed an explosion in the cownose ray population along the eastern seaboard. That population is now estimated at around 40 million. And it takes a whole lot of bay scallops to feed all of these rays.

In 2006, after 100 years, North Carolina’s commercial scallop fishery – the second largest in the nation – was shut down. The reason? There were simply not enough scallops in the estuaries to support it. When the cownose rays migrated through the area, they were consuming almost every adult scallop that they could find. The rays’ effect on the scallops was confirmed by setting up palisades made from PVC pipe around certain scallop beds designed specifically for excluding cownose rays from the area. After a two-year hiatus on harvesting scallops, the fisheries reopened, but barely. And even today, this fishery remains precarious at best.

This is quite possibly just the tip of the iceberg. The population collapse of great sharks in the western Atlantic has occurred primarily within the last 20 years due to commercial longline fishing and the rising demand for shark fin soup. It takes time however, even in a terrestrial ecosystem, for the effects of these sorts of system-wide changes to take shape.

And this is a marine ecosystem we are talking about, one that’s hidden beneath the surface of the water, where we cannot so easily see such changes as they begin to take place. In Yellowstone, anyone could look out across the Lamar Valley and see the lack of willows and aspens. In the ocean and estuaries, it takes teams of specialized researchers working in the water and scores of number crunchers to mine through fisheries data.  And the data does not always point to the same thing.

I had the opportunity to chat with Dr. Stephen Fegley, a marine ecologist from the Institute of Marine Sciences about the data that is currently available. Fegley has been pivotal in analyzing all the numbers from the university’s study on sharks, and if anyone could help explain the discrepancies between fisheries’ and researchers’ data that I was seeing, he was the guy.

“The most important thing that you have to understand about the institute’s study is that it is 43 years old. This is the longest-running study of sharks in the United Sates,” said Dr. Fegley. “Populations fluctuate naturally, and with so many variables, it’s impossible to determine a trend in a population without years of data. This is why UNC’s work is unique. It is looking at specific species over a long period of time.”

The N.C. Department of Marine Fisheries recently released its statistics for the 2014 commercial fishing season. Shark catches were up, way up. In 2013, commercial fishermen brought in an estimated 500,000 pounds of shark from N.C. waters. In 2014, it was double that – tipping the scales at over a million pounds. Such information can be read different ways. For some, this 2014 data could indicate that shark populations were getting healthier and species were rebounding along our coast. But when it comes to statistics, the devil is always in the details.

You see, NCDMF published data doesn’t actually differentiate between species of shark except for the two species of dogfish that are caught commercially. That 1 million pounds of shark says just that: shark. What kind of sharks? Black tip? Tiger? Great White? The prehistoric Megalodon? There is no mention.

Much of the shark fishery tends to take place out near the continental shelf – except for those who are targeting sandbar sharks for their fins, which is only illegal in the United States if they don’t bring the entire shark back to the dock. The shelf is the realm of pelagic sharks such as blue and mako (a species found in many fish tacos). These species are open-ocean sharks. They are not the ones that fall under the coastal complex of species that the Institute of Marine Sciences is ultimately targeting. And they are not the species that function as apex predators in our coastal waters.

Commercial fisherman know the species of sharks that are in question quite well. They have to. Their licenses depend upon it. There is a complete ban on fishing for most of these big sharks. For example, sand tiger sharks (down 99 percent) have been banned since 1997. Dusky sharks (down 99 percent) have been banned since 2000. And the scalloped hammerhead (98 percent) is on the endangered species list.

The majority of the great sharks are all now on a commercial “do not touch” list. But longlines are just that – very long lines. Some stretch for miles and contain many hundreds of hooks. This method of industrial fishing catches fish indiscriminately. Though a commercial longliner may be targeting mahi-mahi or tuna, everything from sharks to sea turtles are caught incidentally and then labeled as by-catch. Some species of sharks can be kept and sold on the market. Others, such as the ones above, are tossed overboard. And by the time these sharks have been landed, they are typically already dead. So regardless of federal bans and even the Endangered Species Act, these species of sharks continue to slip over the edge of oblivion.

Back in the estuaries, as scallops become scarce, cownose rays turn to oysters and hard clams — the stuff in your clam chowder. Our estuaries are already in a state of recovery from the over harvesting of oysters, and millions of dollars are being spent on restoration here. What happens when cownose rays begin focusing on these oyster beds? It is this very question that has sparked the “Save the bay, eat a ray” campaign in Virginia.

And the cownose ray is just one species, the one that we know about simply because it has had an immediate and direct financial effect upon the livelihoods of watermen across our coastal plain. What other ripple effects will the disappearance of these great sharks have across our marine and estuarine systems? We simply don’t know yet.

Those of us who live at the edge of the sea, teeter upon the precipice of the greatest wilderness on our planet. Right here, beneath the waves, is the Serengeti. Apex predators stalk the shadows. Food webs here have a 400-million-year-old history. New species are still being discovered on a regular basis and not just strange microscopic stuff. New species of megafauna are still turning up – such as the Carolina hammerhead, which was announced in 2013.

Our world is inextricably linked to the health and wealth of these oceans. From the oxygen we breathe, the climate we live in and the food that we eat. Yet, we know more about the dark side of the moon than we do this blue wilderness.

Sometimes, it’s all too easy to lose ourselves in the argument of conservation based solely upon anthropocentric desires. What is good for us? What do we want? How do collapsing populations of sharks affect us? And all of this without consideration for what may simply be best for the other members of this planetary community we call life on Earth. We are a species that stumbled upon godlike powers, but never learned how to responsibly wield those powers. We make decisions as to which species shall live, and which shall be slated for extinction with only our own self interests in mind.

For most of us, the question of whether or not great sharks will go extinct seems to be beyond our control. With ethics and morality considered, we wrinkle our brows at the notion and feel frustration, maybe even anger, toward those that we assume are the ones that wield such control and yet allow for this to happen. But if we peel back the layers of excuses and look at the issue for what it really is, we find ourselves staring into a mirror. We are the ones who wield that power. Only, we do so with our wallets and how we chose to spend our money. As long as we create the demand, industry will continue to supply. And that demand currently kills 100 million sharks a year.

As Walt Kelly, the creator of the “Pogo” comic strip, so poignantly revealed to us all, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

You can explore the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge by launching a canoe or kayak into Mill Tail Creek, above, or hiking along Sandy Ridge Trail. Photos: Kip Tabb

EAST LAKE — On the western side of the sounds that separate mainland North Carolina from the Outer Banks lies the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, a vast wilderness of swamp, pocosin and forest that nurtures an environment of extraordinary diversity.

There are a number of roads that lead into the refuge, most of them interconnecting. Flat, fairly straight and dusty, Buffalo City Road is much like the others except that it dead ends at a beautiful kayak and canoe launch on Mill Tail Creek. To the left of the turnaround there’s a smooth, easy to hike trail heading south, a trail that looks as though it may at one time have been a railroad bed to take the lumber that was harvested from the forest.

There was once a small city here — Buffalo City — a logging town from the 1870s to the 1920s and when the logging gave out, the residents turned to moonshining during Prohibition.

There is nothing left of the town; the surrounding swamp, pocosin and forest have reclaimed the land and Buffalo City is now the stuff of legend.

Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge is almost 154,000 acres and is one of the largest wildlife refuges on the East Coast. Now in its 30th year, it has become an important part of efforts to retain the diversity of a pocosin environment.

Alligator River became a national wildlife refuge almost by accident.

In the 1970s and ‘80s, the land that it occupies was being developed for corporate farming by Prulean Farms, a joint effort among a number of large corporations. A drop in crop prices, loss of land value during the 1980 recession and public opposition to a proposal to ditch thousands of acres of wetlands for farming created a scenario where the company felt it would be better to donate the land than to own it.

Bonnie Strawser, the visitor services manager, has been with the refuge since it was founded and she recalls the surprise when the land was donated to the wildlife refuge system. “We knew this chunk of land was being donated to conservation,” she said. “They were looking at either ownership by the state or management by the state.”

Breeding pairs of endangered red wolves were introduced into the refuge in 1987. There are now about 100. Photo: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service If You Go The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service administers the Alligator River refuge jointly with the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge on the Outer Banks. The Visitor Center is on old U.S. 64 about two miles past downtown Manteo on the opposite side of the road from the Lost Colony and Fort Raleigh. The address is 100 Conservation Way. The refuge itself is on the mainland in Dare County. Click here for directions. To strike out on your own, the refuge offers a number of hiking, driving and paddling trails that will give you a chance to the see the vast diversity of animals.  Guided canoe tours and a tram rides will also be offered in the fall. Look here for details. Rangers will also take you out in the refuge at dusk to listen for howling red wolves. Three such excursions are planned in the fall, including a “full moon howl” on Nov. 15. All are free and no registration is required. Many events for the annual Wings Over Water Wildlife Festival, Oct. 21-25, are scheduled in the refuge.

When the donation was discussed with the IRS, however, a different strategy became necessary. “Then the ruling came back that since they had approved the prior donation, that since it had come out of the federal coffers, it has to go into the federal coffers,” she said. “With just a few weeks’ notice we found out we were getting this refuge.”

At the time it was considered a wasteland. “Pocosin wetlands were not something anyone had dealt with,” Strawser recalled. “We (wildlife refuge managers) were used to fresh water marshes. Saltwater marshes. Those kind of marshes.”

Refuge biologist Dennis Stewart has been at the Alligator River since 1994, but did field work on the land for environmental studies before coming to the refuge. The research he did at the time confirmed the value of the refuge. “Early on people didn’t understand the significance of those habitat types for migratory birds,” he said. “But as we were collecting our data we were learning more and more about how valuable it is.”

The value of the refuge became quickly apparent to wildlife managers. One of the largest protected environments along the East Coast, it was the ideal location for an audacious experiment.

The red wolf had been officially declared extinct in the wild, but a captive breeding program kept the species alive and genetically viable. “Here locally we didn’t know about the red wolf at all,” Strawser said. “We didn’t know that the endangered species biologists had pie eyes over this huge piece of landscape that was so rare in the East.”

In 1987 breeding pairs of red wolves were brought to Alligator River. “The service took the bold step of saying as an agency, ‘This Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge is within the historic range of this highly endangered species. This place might be the place to establish an experimental population to see if we can reintroduce a population here,’” refuge manager Mike Bryant said.

“We still have red wolves. So that’s a success,” he added.

Most of the wolves introduced into Alligator River continue to call it home. Estimates put the population at around 100, a population that seems larger — and closer — during the wolf howlings held throughout the year.

Red wolves are just one of a large number of species that roam Alligator River. “We have a very robust bear population out there,” Bryant said.

There is also a thriving population of alligators. “One question I get asked probably more commonly than any other question is, ‘Do you really have alligators there?’” Stewart said. “And the answer is ‘Yes, we have alligators.’ We are at the northern range of the alligators here.”

There have been some surprises as biologists have inventoried the refuge. “An interesting species is the red cockaded woodpecker,” Stewart said. Before the discovery of the woodpecker in Alligator River, it was thought they lived only in longleaf pine forests. “Somehow the red cockaded woodpecker can survive in the pond pine pocosin, which is completely different than the longleaf pine habitat.”

In addition to wildlife management, Alligator River is also in the forefront of efforts to study the effects of sea-level rise. Because of its history, geography and location, the refuge is one the first locations to feel the effects of rising seas.

When the land was being cleared for farming, ditches and canals were dug to drain the fields. Otherwise the high water table would make it impossible to grow crops. The Nature Conservancy saw an opportunity to develop an experimental model to see if the effects of sea-level rise can be mitigated.

Volunteers plant trees in the refuge in a sea-level rise experiment. Photo: John Warner, the Nature Conservancy

“We’ve got this big chunk of land that’s so low in the landscape as the sea rises we’re losing land,” Bryant explained. “We’re also getting a big change in the plant community from forest to marsh at a very rapid rate. This rate of change is not normal.”

“When you look at maybe 90 or 95 percent of the refuge, it’s under two-feet elevation,” Stewart said. “So a sea-level rise of a half inch can wet out a large area. Wherever you have a canal, you get this wedge of change where the salt water encroaches.”

Working with the Nature Conservancy, Stewart has devised a control system that may give wildlife managers a tool to slow the effects of saltwater encroachment. “I refer to it as a climate adaptation project that we have been working on jointly with the Nature Conservancy,” he said. “We’ve had a multifaceted project to try to return it to a more natural process so it doesn’t go as far inland as it would through the canal system. We have a  . . . water control structure that has check valves on the downstream end. They close when the water is coming upstream so the salt water can’t go upstream.”

The project also includes water control systems to spread fresh water during heavy rains and experiments with native plants that can best handle saltwater intrusion.

The experiments are part of a mandate to preserve a wilderness as something to be treasured. “We’re an agency of people who are really passionate about wildlife,” Bryant said. “And understanding that you don’t have wildlife without habitat if they’re going to be in the wild. The reason for establishing a wildlife refuge is they need a place to live as wild things.”

MANTEO — Twenty-five years after the first captive-bred red wolves were released into the swamps and pine forest of Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, the success of the Red Wolf Recovery Program is intertwined in an uneasy relationship with the wolf’s close cousin, the coyote.

The wolves were declared extinct in 1980, but now 100 to 120 of them roam freely, and exclusively, in a five-county range in northeastern North Carolina.

So far, biologists with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s program have effectively managed to keep prolific coyotes from interbreeding with red wolves, a behavior that had become a major threat to the wolves’ recovery.

The red wolves once ranged throughout the Southeast.

The management technique combines human interference and natural territorial response. A coyote would be captured, sterilized and returned to the same place in the wild. It would then instinctively hold the territory, blocking interloping —and fertile — coyotes from entering. Eventually, a larger red wolf will move in and take over.

“We’ve had great success with that,” said David Rabon, coordinator of the Red Wolf Recovery Program. “In all cases, wolves will kill or displace the coyote. There have been no cases where the coyotes will kill or displace the wolf.”

But unnatural causes of mortality — gunshots, vehicle strikes — are more difficult to solve.

A recent state decision to permit night-time coyote hunting has coincided with the shooting deaths between September and November of four radio-collared red wolves, renewing issues with co-existing coyote and wolf populations.

In August 2012, the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission implemented a temporary rule that allows hunters to use a light when shooting coyotes on private lands at night. The problem is that the animals, with their big ears and similar body shape, look a lot like red wolves, which are protected under the federal Endangered Species Act. After a court challenge by conservation groups, a judge issued a temporary injunction in late November on the practice within the red wolf recovery area — Dare, Tyrrell, Hyde, Washington and Beaufort counties.

The investigation into the shootings is continuing.

David Cobb, chief of the commission’s Division of Wildlife Management, said that coyotes can be found in every one of the state’s 100 counties, and have been known to stray into a city or two. Although they’re rarely aggressive to humans, they frequently prey on livestock and even pets.

“The commission made the decision that they need to move forward to provide landowners with options to manage their properties,” Cobb said.

Cobb said that a study is underway to determine the coyote population in the state, but it appears to be growing. Hunters can shoot as many coyotes as they want every day of the year, as long as it’s on private land and they have permission of the landowner. On Sunday, only archery equipment can be used.

Red wolves, top, and coyotes look a lot a like, especially at night. A new state policy that allows nighttime hunting of coyotes had conservation groups worried that wolves would be shot by mistake. A judge agreed and stopped the hunting program in the five-county wolf recovery area.

Last year, about 36,000 coyotes were killed in the state by 32,388 registered hunters, according to a mail survey of hunters, Cobb said. Responding to a new question in the 2011 survey, 12 percent of the hunters said they shot the coyote incidentally while hunting other animals.

The hunter is responsible for determining whether it is a red wolf or a coyote before deciding to shoot, Cobb said. There are stiff penalties for shooting an endangered species.

To a large extent, hunting led to the decimation of the red wolves in the 1960s, when predator controls coupled with habitat loss essentially wiped out the species in the southeastern U.S.  Biologists found a small population surviving along the Gulf Coast, and eventually 14 captured wolves became a fruitful breeding colony.

Red wolf pups were bred successfully in captivity for 10 years, and it was decided to begin an experimental restoration program in the Alligator River refuge. Four adult pairs were released in September 1987; by 1992, there were at least 30 wolves in the wild. Theit range has since expanded to 1.7 million acres.

Today, according to the most recent 2012 program report, there are 71 known wolves — many with tracking collars — in the recovery area, including 15 wolf packs and eight mixed packs of wolves and coyotes. There were also 45 sterile coyotes being monitored in the recovery area.

Nine confirmed red wolf litters — a total of 40 pups — were born in 2012, and two captive-born pups were placed with a foster mother in the refuge.

Also, about 200 captive wolves are part of the breeding program at other U.S. locations.

In one of the program’s most encouraging accomplishments, three captive-born wolf pups fostered in the wild, now mature, had their own pups in the wild this year.

“If you think about what is the ultimate success,” Rabon said. “One is they survive the fostering — the percentage is 90 percent, which is incredibly high. But the true success is not only surviving, but becoming a reproducing adult.”

Today, the recovery program has eight full-time staff, and enough money to keep it moving forward, Rabon said. A new facility in Columbia run by the Red Wolf Coalition, a nonprofit that works closely with the recovery program, is focused on education and public outreach and has a couple of captive-born wolves onsite that can be viewed by appointment. The other facility in the refuge mostly houses captive wolves for management purposes and is not open to the public.

Alligator River’s red wolf recovery program has been lauded as a model for other wolf recovery programs in the country. But Rabon concedes that the population has been stagnant for a number of years — the goal has been to have about 220 wolves in the wild — and the program is being reevaluated.

The biggest challenge, he said, is addressing losses in the population that create holes, whether it’s a coyote or a wolf. Whatever animal moves back in, especially if it’s a fertile coyote, can threaten the management success in preventing hybridization, among other challenges.

“It’s the loss that creates that hole that has the potential to create a domino effect,” he said. “It creates a disruption. It never allows things to reach an equilibrium.”

It’s not that mortalities are not expected in management, Rabon said, it’s the convergence of unnatural and natural factors all at one time that can compound the destabilizing effect.

In evaluating what is contributing to the management issues and examining ways to mitigate or abate the problems, he said, the conclusion may be that change is here to stay.

“If it is a new normal,” Rabon said, “then we’re trying to develop new ideas for that.”

Meanwhile, the program is investigating expansion to an additional recovery site in the southeastern U.S, one with a fair amount of open wilderness, a suitable food supply and a willing and tolerant human population.

“I think for the most part, people have seen 25 years of a restoration program,” Rabon said. “The wolves have not taken livestock or threatened their homes or property. The majority of people don’t see them as a threat they once may have seen them as.”