Red Wolf
(Canis rufus)
When I was a child, I loved the legend of Romulus and Remus, the twins raised by a she-wolf in the forests of Italy. It gave a strange sense of authenticity to my favorite wolf story of all—the adoption of little Mowgli into a wolf pack, in Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book. And then came Jack London’s Call of the Wild, which not only reinforced my love of the wolf, but gave me a passionate longing to spend time in the wilderness with these magnificent animals.
It is unfortunate that wolves have been so hated and so feared. There are very few authenticated accounts of wolves attacking human beings in North America. Occasionally they will take livestock because, of course, we have moved farther and farther into their wild hunting grounds. And because of this, along with fear, they have been horribly persecuted in Canada, the United States, and Mexico—trapped and poisoned and hunted with bows and arrows, spears and guns. Even attacked from the air by people in helicopters. And in light of what we now know, thanks to numerous wildlife biologists who have spent years observing them in the wild, the all-out attempt to eradicate wolves can be seen as tragic, unjustified—and in a way extraordinary since they are indisputably the ancestors of “man’s best friend,” the domesticated dog.
There are three species of wolves in North America, of which the gray wolf is the best known. Then there is its close cousin, the Mexican gray wolf. And the red wolf, the subject of this chapter. The three species have many similarities in behavior. A pack typically comprises a breeding pair and their offspring—yearling pups from a previous litter and the pups of the season. They are most active in the early morning and evening when they hunt as a pack. Small cubs, of course, stay in the den—initially with their mother—and other pack members return to feed them by regurgitating meat.
Art Beyer, USFWS wildlife biologist, checking out the health of wild pups, just a few days old. The parents will come back after the biologists leave and move the pups to a different secret location. (Melissa McGaw)
Red wolves are recognizably smaller than gray wolves and about twice as large as coyotes—although yearling red wolves are almost the same in size and coloring as adult coyotes. At one time they were common throughout the southeastern United States, but predator control along with loss of habitat severely decimated their numbers during the 1960s, until only a few remained along the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana.
By 1973, when the red wolf was finally classified as endangered, it was on the very brink of extinction. Scientists decided, in a desperate bid to save the species, to capture as many as possible for captive breeding with the goal of eventually returning them to the wild. Only seventeen were found. When the last of these was captured in 1980, the red wolf was declared extinct in the wild. All red wolves in existence today are descendants of fourteen of those individuals captured in the early 1970s.
From Pen to Freedom
The breeding program, in which a number of zoos took part, was coordinated by the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s Red Wolf Recovery Program. By 1986, it was thought that there were enough young captive-born wolves to start the release program, and after careful surveys North Carolina’s Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge had been selected as the most suitable area. And so, fourteen years after the birth of the first captive litter of red wolves, four adult pairs were taken to their new home.
Of course, not everyone was thrilled at the idea of wolves roaming in the wild again. And so, in order to convince the public that, if things went wrong, the wolves could be easily recaptured at any time, scientists had been working on collars that could be remotely activated to discharge an anesthetic into the animal concerned. Unfortunately, these were not ready in time, and the four wolves, and others who followed, had to be held in large fenced enclosures for almost a year, much longer than planned. At least they had time to get accustomed to their new environment—its scents and sounds and some of the various animals they would meet in the field. And finally the day came when the first pair of wolves could be released to begin exploring their new wilderness home. The other pairs were released at weekly intervals.
It was a heady time for the Red Wolf Recovery Program field team. Chris Lucash, who continues to devote his life to this program, was part of the original team. I asked him how he felt when the wolves were first released. “How I felt? Wow! Excited, elated, incredibly—and naively—optimistic. I felt extremely fortunate, maybe even blessed, to be in a place at a point in time that was so rare and potentially such a pivot point in history, at least for one very historically unlucky species. This was the most important thing I could be doing.” It was a time, he told me, when they were filled with hope at every release.
They did not fully realize the dangers these naive wolves would face. They did not guess that 60 to 80 percent of those wolves would not make it—would get sick or collide with a car as they tried to cross the roads that bisected their new home. And the field team felt devastated by each loss. “We had to learn to keep some distance, try not to get too emotionally involved,” said Chris. That was one of the reasons why the wolves, for the most part, were not given names.
But it was impossible to remain absolutely detached, especially back then. There were only a few wolves, and the biologists knew them all personally; they handled them, followed their movements, tried to understand their behavior and motives. And when they had to capture them, they had to find ways to outwit them. “Our hopes and spirits rose high with the good news, and sank deep with the bad. Those of us here from early on had to do a lot of growing up—and it just happened to be in association with these animals.” Chris and Michael Morse, another biologist from those first days who is still with the team, have shared some of those early stories with me.
A True Survivor
Although the wolves are not officially named, for convenience the field team gave them names that usually derived from the location of the pack or some nearby geographic feature. “Not too romantic, but better than a stud book number,” said Chris. And, for the most part, those are the names that I have used. Survivor, though, is the name that I have chosen, retrospectively, for the first wild-born pup of the recovery program—because she survived against incredible odds.
“Her captive-born parents were physically impressive and beautiful, but ill-fated,” said Chris. It seems they only had the one pup; the biologists did not disturb the den at the time, but looked for signs later. A few weeks after whelping, Survivor’s mother crawled back to the release pen and into the den box from which she had been released about eight months before. And there she died of a uterine infection. Survivor, who could barely have been weaned before her mother died, survived, presumably, with the help of her father. Alas, a few months later she lost him, too—he died of asphyxiation with a raccoon’s kidney lodged in his trachea. For weeks, then months, there was no sighting of Survivor, although sometimes the team found tracks that could have been hers. And, indeed, against all odds she had survived.
Eventually she was captured and collared. She managed to evade death during a private trapping season (when trappers are allowed to trap furbearing animals as a form of nuisance control or as a “hobby”). In fact, she became very smart at avoiding traps, and when the team wanted to catch her—in order to replace her collar, for example—they had to work hard to outsmart her.
She eventually paired with a male, and they became the first wolves allowed to stay on private land, south of the refuge. After this, Survivor was captured—yet again—to replace her collar. It was to be for the last time, for the new collar stopped working, and they never found her again.
Brindled Hope
Brindled Hope was one of the first wolves to be released in late 1987. It was months after her arrival from a wolf sanctuary in Missouri that they noticed her name, handwritten in small letters, on the back of her sky-kennel. She was not a very impressive-looking wolf, Michael told me. She was smaller than average—and at five years, older than most selected for release. Nevertheless she and the mate who had been chosen for her produced one of the first two pups born into the wild that year. The pup was a female, officially 351F but whom I am calling here Hope.
It was not long before disaster struck: Brindled Hope’s mate was killed by a car on the highway when their pup was only a month old. Brindled Hope, not knowing, waited for him as long as she could, but she needed to move to an area where there was more prey. And so, after eleven days, she set off toward the more open farmlands where she had once hunted with her mate. She and her pup traveled beside the highway, quickly moving into the thick vegetation whenever a car approached. There the team found the two of them, the pup struggling to keep up with her mother. Keeping their distance, the biologists followed until they reached a dirt road leading to the safety of the fields. First, though, the mother and pup had to cross the highway—and the biologists stopped traffic in both directions until the pair made it across. Brindled Hope successfully raised her pup, Hope, and eventually mother and daughter paired with the Bulls Boys and lived in their pack for many years.
The Bulls Boys
Biologists prepare some captive wolves for release by raising them in wild settings on islands within wildlife refuges, where they can learn the survival skills they will need for their new life. Such were the Bulls Boys, brothers who arrived as yearlings in 1989 after living for almost a year on Bulls Island at Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge in South Carolina. They were released into what was known as the Milltail Farms area on the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge. “We had no clue that they would catapult the fledgling wolf project on the road to success,” said Michael. “With their tall, lanky bodies, sizable feet, and broad heads, their appearance, although impressive, gave no hint of the substantial impact they would have on the recovery program.”
The Milltail Farms area comprised some ten thousand acres of farms and forest where Brindled Hope had lived with her pup, Hope. When Hope was old enough to get by without her mother, Brindled Hope was recaptured, was paired with a new mate, and produced four new pups in captivity. Then she and her new family—including her mate—were released back into the Milltail Farms area. Surely, thought the biologists, there was plenty of space for all. But the Bulls Boys—the Milltail pack—were not pleased, and within a month had attacked and killed the male intruder. Soon after this, one of the brothers—I’ll call him Boy One—paired with Hope; the other, Boy Two, paired with Brindled Hope, whose four pups, remarkably, were allowed to remain unchallenged.
It seemed that the Bulls Boys might each sire a litter in the next breeding season, and excitement ran high in the field team. “Second-generation pups were a major measure of the recovery program’s success, and it was happening in the first two years!” said Michael. But as he said to me, “It was all too good to be true.” Boy One, from Bulls Island and not familiar with roads, was killed crossing a highway just before the 1989 breeding season.
However, the surviving brother grew stronger and stronger. In 2000, he reached the advanced age of twelve years and, no longer a “boy,” became “the Old Man.” He actually allowed one of his sons to establish and raise a family “virtually next door,” in part of his territory. This was an arrangement that he probably would not have tolerated in his younger days, speculated Michael.
“But even though the Old Man may not have been the breeding male of his pack in his last days,” Michael wrote in a letter to me, “he left a living legacy.” By the time he died in 2002, he had sired at least twenty-two pups from seven litters. “His genes are today an integral part of the wild population of red wolves in northeastern North Carolina.” Reading between the lines, I sensed that Michael had a deep affection for this wolf. And I knew I was right when I came to his last line: “And I hope it’s true, what the old-timers say—‘All dogs go to heaven.’” For what it’s worth, Michael, I’m sure they do.
The Gator Pack
The wolves from Graham, Washington, here called Graham Male and Graham Female, ultimately became the breeding pair of the Gator Pack. They had arrived together at the start of 1988 and were released with mates who had been chosen for them. Those matchmaking efforts, however, were not successful: The two females that were successively offered to Graham Male were killed by cars, and Graham Female’s mate simply disappeared. And then Graham Female and Graham Male found each other and began consorting in the winter of 1989. They soon became inseparable: “Once they bonded, they were rarely apart,” said Michael. Both grew to be very large in their prime, the male weighing a record eighty-four pounds and the female, sixty-five pounds.
Their home range was a vast sixty thousand acres of gum swamp and pocosins in the central portion of the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge—a relatively harsh environment compared with Milltail Farms. “Seldom seen by humans,” wrote Michael, “the Graham pair—now the Gator Pack—lived in near seclusion,” producing three litters. In 1992, a family group of wolves was released near one of the boundaries of the Graham Pair’s territory. “They ran off the adult pair and killed and ate the pups,” said Michael. “It was the last time we attempted a release near them.”
On April 1, 1994, Graham Male, aged nine years, was found dead in his territory: “It looked like he just lay down and died,” Michael noted. And only four months later, his mate left the Gator Pack territory and went on “a long walk-about.” As she was passing through the home range of another wolf pack, the River Pack, to the north, “she lay down at Deep Bay to die.”
Red Wolf Recovery Team biologists Chris Lucash and Michael Morse check a litter of wild pups in northeastern North Carolina. The biologists perform a general health evaluation and insert a small transponder for identification purposes. (USFWS)
Fostering Pups in the Wild
And so, gradually, the captive-born wolves adapted to their wild home, gave birth, and raised pups. Despite the heartaches and disappointments, there were many success stories, too. The team became more confident as their understanding grew regarding what could and what would not work.
Even when it became clear that the reintroduction program was a success, it was still necessary (and remains so to the present) to maintain the captive population at about two hundred individuals. This is in part because additional wolves are needed to bolster the wild population, serving as a backup in case a disease wipes out those in the wild, and in part to provide stock for future reintroduction programs in different areas.
A few captive-born pups are returned to the wild very early in life—when they are between ten and fourteen days old, just before their eyes open. At this age, they are readily accepted and cared for by both the male and the female of a wild pack. This “fostering” is only done if a wild mother has lost all or some of her own litter, or has a very small litter that allows her to manage one or two extra pups. Fostering of this kind not only boosts numbers of wolves in the wild but also, because pups are selected carefully, helps maintain the genetic viability of the population. I was fascinated to hear about this, and how it all began.
The first time it was tried was in 1998. “It was,” Chris told me, “a bit of an act of desperation and/or lack of alternatives.” A captive female killed one of her three newborn pups, and when it was found that she had done this before, at the small zoo where she had been kept, it was decided not to take chances with the two remaining pups. They were taken from her and, rather than being hand-raised, were placed in the den of a wild female. The team believed this would work based on experience with captive fostering, but nevertheless it must have been a wonderful moment when those little pups were immediately accepted by the female, who raised them with her own youngsters.
Sometimes the field team comes upon wild pups that have to be fostered. Once, a female was discovered dead in the area where it was believed that she had a den. A search revealed two pups, weak and dehydrated but still alive. They had been without their mother for at least two to three days. “After two days of reviving them as best we could,” said Chris, “we located another wild female with similar-aged pups, who accepted and raised the fostered ones as her own.”
Collars and Radio Tracking
Approximately 65 to 70 percent of the wild red wolves in northeastern North Carolina are wearing telemetry collars, either the standard VHS variety or one of the new specially designed GPS-enabled collars that use satellites to automatically record their location—and that of the wolves wearing them—four or five times each day. This information is stored in each collar, and every one to two months the biologists can download it all at once with a special receiver. These data—which can consist of three to four hundred locations!—are then used to create a map that will show movement patterns, habitat preference, and home-range size as well as proximity to any other wolf who happens to be wearing a collar.
Michael sent me, from one of his reports, an example of wolf tracking with this technology. Wolf “11301M” was collared as a yearling when he was still living with the pack in his natal home range. Over the next year, the data regularly obtained from his collar provided the field team with a wealth of information. First they learned about his movements in his original home range. Then, when he left his natal area in the spring and began his travels, they learned where he went.
“He seemed to go from wolf pack to wolf pack looking for a place to live,” wrote Michael. “… He skirted the core areas of the adjacent packs in order to stay out of trouble with other wolves (a smart thing for a young single wolf) … and he moved completely around Lake Phelps before stopping on Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.” There he found a female wolf who had just paired with a sterilized, radio-collared wolf–coyote hybrid. The hybrid was soon displaced from the area and subsequently was found dead (located by his telemetry signal). Examination of his body showed that 11301M had almost certainly killed his rival. The victorious male then paired with the female, and together they will form the new Pocosin Lakes pack.
A Successful Program
In 2007, there were about a hundred red wolves, in some twenty packs, well established in the wild. Since the first were released some twenty years ago, about five hundred pups have been born in the wild population. The first experimental population release area was expanded to include three national wildlife refuges, a Department of Defense bombing range, state-owned lands, and private property—about 1.7 million acres in five counties in North Carolina, and there are red wolf release sites across 15,445 acres of private land.
In fact, the Red Wolf Field Team achieved in five years (1999 to 2004) a level of success that some scientists had believed would take fifteen. Barry Braden, who headed the US Wolf Conservation Center for three years, told me that the management teams working to return the red wolf to North Carolina as well as the Rocky Mountain gray wolf to the Northern Rockies have been successful because there has been such excellent cooperation among government personnel, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and concerned citizen grassroots movements. “Of course,” said Barry with a laugh, “these factions do not always agree, but they all care, and they sort it out.” This is in sharp contrast, he told me, with the style of the management team working with the Mexican gray wolf project—which has not so far been a success.
The team leader for the Red Wolf Recovery Program, Bud Fazio, told me of his enormous regard for the biologists who are part of his field team—some of whom, like Chris Lucash and Michael Morse, have up to twenty-one years of experience working with wolves. All are dedicated field biologists who, for nearly seven days per week and sometimes twenty-four hours per day, handle and monitor the wild red wolf population, manage coyotes, take part in education programs, talk to landowners, and resolve the many problems that crop up in a field program of this scope and complexity. The work can be physically demanding. Chris gave me an example.
“Whelping season is a brief period each spring that the field biologists both look forward to and dread,” Chris said. First they must find the den following signals from the mother’s radio collar (or the father’s if she has lost hers). Having located the pups, they check their health, weigh them, take a drop of blood from each for a genetic record, and insert a tiny transponder chip under each pup’s skin for lifelong instant identification (as we do with our dogs). It doesn’t sound too difficult, but according to Chris—and this is the dreaded part—the wolves choose isolated places, as unapproachable as possible, for whelping. And “the whelping season also coincides with other uninviting seasonal changes: the beginning of high heat and humidity, the prolific growth of thorny vines and poison ivy, and the burgeoning population of biting insects.”
And so, Chris continued, “For long stretches, I have to drag myself on my elbows through low narrow tunnels, through dense shrubs and downed trees overgrown with blackberry and entwined with honeysuckle, greenbrier, and grapevine, driven on by the fleeting hope of finding a den or a pup—but also by the unnerving thought of countless seed ticks traveling up my clothing and the maddening realization that dozens have already made it through to my skin.”
Usually such a search takes hours, and often it is unsuccessful. The mother whom they are tracking may not be at the den; if she hears them approaching, she may lead them in the wrong direction. “Some years,” said Chris, “I find nothing but lonely, empty daybeds, followed then by several weeks of itching.”
Coyotes, Farmers, and Other Challenges
One major problem for the recovery plan is the migration into red wolf release sites of coyotes (not native to this part of North Carolina). This has led to two problems. There is a lot of hunting in the area, and unfortunately the coyote is becoming increasingly popular with hunters. Red wolves are sometimes mistaken for these eastern coyotes, particularly young wolves who, as was mentioned, look very similar in size and color, and this has led to a number of red wolves being shot by mistake. Thus, educating the public about red wolves is a major challenge. The second coyote-related problem is that red wolves will mate with coyotes when they cannot find a red wolf to mate with, thus creating a hybrid animal. The Red Wolf Recovery Program’s coyote control strategy is attempting, with some success, to establish a coyote-free zone in and around the area into which the red wolf has been introduced.
For the most part, people have been tolerant of the return of the red wolf to its ancestral range, and fortunately the wolves are typically shy animals, and usually avoid humans and human activities. There are, of course, farmers who believe that the wolves are a threat to their livestock, but these fears have proved ill founded. During the first twenty years of the program, the wolves were seldom found guilty of killing domestic animals. There were only three proven incidents—a duck, a chicken, and a dog. And on the positive side, red wolves prey on the nutria that were introduced into the area and are a nuisance to farmers. They also hunt the raccoons who take eggs and young birds, and this may have led to an increase in bird populations, including quail and turkeys. All of this has helped to give red wolves a good reputation in the local community.
One of the most important aspects in any plan to release large predators is a good education program—and it must be prepared by people who understand and are sensitive to the concerns, fears, and prejudices of people living in the area. David Denton, hunter education specialist with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, together with the red wolf staff, works hard to ensure that people in the area understand, as much as possible, red wolf behavior and how to behave if a red wolf is encountered. They also teach hunters to recognize the difference between young red wolves and coyotes.
Howling with the Wolves
For the last ten years, the Red Wolf Coalition, the only red wolf citizen support organization, has pursued its mission of educating people by spreading awareness. Extremely popular are the “Howling Safaris”: People can visit the refuge to hear the magical chorus of a red wolf pack. I remember so clearly when I first heard wolves howling in Yellowstone National Park. It is utterly unforgettable.
Field biologists sometimes howl to the wolves they know so well. “You never forget,” Michael Morse wrote to me, “the first time a wild wolf responds to your howls, offered into the dark night.” On his first attempt he was not an accomplished howler, and he ended with a series of uncontrollable coughs—to the great amusement of the senior wolf biologists. “But they stopped laughing when the two newly released red wolf brothers returned my howl!” said Michael. “And although my vocal cords felt scorched, the swelling sensation in my chest and mind made all else insignificant.”
It did not surprise me to learn that the Red Wolf Recovery Program won America’s highest conservation honor in 2007, the North American Conservation Award from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA). So many people have worked with and for the program in so many different capacities, giving so much of their lives, since it was first launched. And I know that for all of them, whether they are donors, partners, volunteers, or the biologists working long hours in often demanding circumstances, the knowledge that the red wolves are once more roaming freely in the land of their ancestors will be thanks enough. The best reward they could ask for will be the haunting sound of red wolves howling under the moon.