How the world’s last wild red wolves are avoiding extinction

The births sparked joy among red wolf advocates and the small team of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employees who oversee the decades-long effort to restore a native animal that once roamed widely throughout the Southeast, but saw its numbers in the wild plummet to single digits by 2020.

The elation didn’t last.

On June 5, the father of the litter, 2444, was struck and killed by a vehicle on Highway 64 — one of four red wolves to meet such a fate over the past year alone. The mother soon abandoned the litter of pups, leaving heartbreak and frustration in their place.

“It’s a serious roller coaster,” Joe Madison, the red wolf recovery program manager in North Carolina for the Fish and Wildlife Service, recalled just after dawn on a recent morning, as he drove near the site of the recent vehicle strike. “It takes a toll, I’m not gonna lie.”

A roller coaster might be the best way to describe a recovery effort that has been underway since the 1970s, when officials rescued the last genetically pure red wolves from a population that had been decimated by government-sanctioned hunting. The species Canis rufus was declared extinct in the wild in 1980, though captive breeding has continued.

Since 1987, the push to save red wolves from extinction has been based around an experimental population on the Albemarle Peninsula, with its vast swamp forests, marshes and open farmland.

The effort has endured a dizzying series of ups and downs over that time. It is a complex story of shifting priorities within the federal government, of conflict with nearby landowners, of animals stricken down by gunshots and cars, of scientific disputes and legal challenges, of miscommunication and simmering resentments, of ongoing distrust but also of determination and dedication.

“There are always peaks and valleys,” said Kim Wheeler, who for almost two decades has run the Red Wolf Coalition, an outreach and educational nonprofit in Columbia, N.C.

The last few years have seen the program slowly emerge from one of its darkest valleys, when the red wolf population that once grew to 120 here shrank to only seven, and the future of the species and the government effort to save it seemed precarious at best.

During the Biden administration, the federal government has recommitted to helping red wolves thrive in this landscape — and eventually, elsewhere across the Southeast.

Officials have begun once again to strategically release some of the nearly 300 captive-bred wolves into the wild. Multiple litters of pups have been born in the five-county area that surrounds the Alligator River refuge. And the government has launched a concerted effort to mend fractured local relationships that have bred acrimony, fostered misinformation and imperiled the prospects of long-term success.

“The hope is that this time we are going to get it right,” said Ron Sutherland, chief scientist for the Wildlands Network, who has worked for more than a decade on red wolf issues. “I’m optimistic that all the pieces are there.”

Still, with fewer than 20 known red wolves on the landscape and their presence a delicate issue, their future here remains inherently uncertain. No one understands that better than Madison.

“We’ve still got a long way to go,” he said as he peered from the window of his government-issued Chevy truck one morning. “I don’t think anybody thinks it’s going to be easy or short.”

And yet, he insists the work of restoring endangered red wolves remains very much worth it.

“They are a missing piece of the ecosystem out here,” he said. “And without that, things are out of whack.”

A fraught history, a fragile future

Francine Madden, an outside mediator hired by the federal government, spent much of the past year and a half talking with more than 150 people impacted by the red wolf recovery efforts.

A 37-page “conflict assessment” she published in June summarizes hours spent with farmers and hunters, business owners and community leaders, federal and state officials, red wolf advocacy groups and many others.

“In these conversations, I sensed great concern about the depth and history of the conflict. I heard despair, anger, frustration, exhaustion and bitterness,” she wrote. “But I also heard feelings of positive resolve, and even occasional hints of cautious optimism about what it could mean to really hear one another.”

To understand those long-held tensions and the hope for a less volatile future, it’s helpful to look at the not-too-distant past.

Barely a decade ago, the red wolf recovery program in North Carolina seemed largely on solid footing a quarter century after it had begun.

In 2012, the number of wolves in the wild reached a peak of about 120, according to federal officials.

But those growing numbers also coincided with growing conflict in the area. Much of the anger was tied up in a broader set of frustrations over land management, and a sentiment among some that the federal government was imposing its will with little regard for or input from locals.

Some landowners and hunters bristled at coyote hunting restrictions and complained of the wolves’ presence on their lands as they ventured from the nearby federal refuges. Some landowners argued that red wolves were a detriment to deer populations — a charge that advocates and biologists have maintained is unfounded.

Amid the discord, the number of wolves went into a steep decline.

Numerous red wolves — the average adult weighs as much as 80 pounds and stands about 26 inches tall, with characteristic penny-colored fur — were found illegally shot to death, with some hunters claiming they mistook the wolves for coyotes. Others were mowed down by passing cars.

By 2015, the federal government was facing charges of poor coordination with local authorities and mounting anger from vocal landowners. State wildlife officials called on the Fish and Wildlife Service to end its recovery program and once again declare the red wolf extinct in the wild.

That same year, the federal government said it would not release any more endangered wolves in eastern North Carolina while it studied the feasibility of the program.

Conservation groups sued, claiming the Fish and Wildlife Service had neglected its obligations under the Endangered Species Act. In 2018, a federal judge agreed, writing in a scathing opinion that an agency sworn to protect the endangered species had failed to do so, in part by planning to give landowners more leeway to kill red wolves that came onto their property.

Meanwhile, the number of red wolves kept dwindling. No new pups were born in the wild in 2019, 2020 or 2021. The number of wolves being tracked with radio collars shrank to seven, with no mating pairs.

“We came remarkably close to extinction,” Sutherland said.

Since then, the tide has begun to turn once again.

Amid a legal challenge from conservation groups, the federal government in 2021 began to release captive-bred wolves into the wild once more.

In 2022, a litter of six critically endangered red wolves were born in a den at the Alligator River refuge — the first in four years.

Last August, as part of a settlement with advocacy groups, the Fish and Wildlife Service again recommitted to annual red wolf release plans and vowed to manage the eastern North Carolina population “in a manner consistent with the [Endangered Species Act].”

Months later, the agency released a long-awaited recovery plan, which calls for the government to eventually establish “at least three viable populations” of red wolves across their historic range, each of them self-sustaining and genetically diverse.

That goal, the agency acknowledged, could take 50 years and ultimately cost several hundred million dollars.

But it will never succeed, the government wrote, unless the Fish and Wildlife Service works in tandem with local residents, scientists, advocacy groups and other government agencies.

“Recovery of threatened and endangered species cannot be done by a single agency or organization,” the plan states. “The Service must work with others to be successful.”

Plenty of frustration and wariness remain, Madden said in an email, but some individuals, from local landowners to federal officials to conservation activists, “seem willing to roll up their sleeves and give it one more try.”

“We’re still in the early stages,” she wrote, “but already I see glimmers of optimism on all sides.”

Ongoing threats, from cars to climate change

While Madden and others work to repair frayed relationships, another critical task looms: preventing more red wolves from dying at the hands of humans.

In recent years, vehicle strikes along Highway 64 and other roads have become the largest cause of mortality, with each death dealing a significant blow to the recovery program. Nearly a quarter of known adult red wolves in the wild died on area roads last year.

“It’s maddening,” says Madison, whose agency has placed electronic message boards along the highway warning drivers of the presence of endangered red wolves.

One development that could help is the construction of wildlife crossings, which could aid not only red wolves but also bear, deer, turtles, snakes and other animals that have perished along this stretch.

The 2021 infrastructure bill passed by Congress includes $350 million in grants for wildlife crossings, and state and federal officials plan to apply soon for a project that would provide crossings along Highway 64, which slices through the Alligator River refuge.

“Right now, road mortality is the main thing holding the population back,” Sutherland said on a sweltering afternoon as he checked trail cameras his group maintains in the area. “If we don’t start now, they will never get built.”

An anonymous donor offered to give $2 million to help build crossings if conservation groups could raise an extra $2 million in matching funds this summer. The idea is that $4 million could be leveraged to obtain an additional $16 million in federal funding.

“It’s a great opportunity,” Sutherland said. And yet, not a slam dunk. “It turns out that it’s not that easy to go out and find $2 million, especially in an election year.”

Meanwhile, the Fish and Wildlife Service has taken other measures to try to mitigate risks. It now puts orange reflective tape on the radio collars that it places on red wolves, in an effort to reduce confusion with coyotes. And the service is working with state officials to more quickly clean up other road kill that can attract red wolves.

Madison said the agency also is trying to more frequently let landowners know when red wolves venture in their direction.

“We’re more transparent than in the past,” he said. “We want to tell people when they are on their land.”

One other threat for which there is no simple answer: sea level rise and climate change. As rising waters intrude on the refuge, scientists say, the area available to red wolves could shrink over time.

“Future habitat loss from sea level rise and increased flooding is expected to impact” red wolves, the government wrote in its recent recovery plan, “and could affect the population’s ability to reach viability.”

‘We cannot give up on this animal’

For now, on any given day in eastern North Carolina, it’s possible to encounter a mixture of skepticism and steadfastness, of wariness and resolve when it comes to red wolves.

Blake Gard, who grew up in the area and is president of the board of directors for the Manns Harbor Fire Department, said many residents are largely indifferent, and that the hard feelings that exist are often less about the animals and more about a general distrust of the federal government.

“There hasn’t been a lot of involvement or outreach,” said Gard, who has advocated for locals to have more say in how the program operates and is promoted going forward. “The lack of communication has led to people filling in the blanks themselves.”

Stephen Fletcher, who owns 170 acres of land in nearby Beaufort County, is among those who still bristle at restrictions on coyote hunting that were imposed in the five counties around the refuge to try to reduce shooting of red wolves — restrictions that don’t exist elsewhere in the state.

“It affects my wildlife management plans on my own property,” Fletcher said. “We’re going on close to 40 years of this … At what point do we say it’s a lost cause in this area?”

Despite the lingering frustrations, fervent support remains for the effort to reestablish red wolves in the wild, researchers and advocates say.

“We have to find some middle ground … We cannot give up on this animal,” Wheeler said one day inside the small office of her coalition, where wolf prints hang on the walls and wolf books line her shelves. “The red wolf has a place on the landscape.”

At dusk on nearly any evening, the gravel roads along the Alligator River refuge are dotted with visitors scanning the landscape for a glimpse of one of the planet’s most endangered creatures, along with the black bears, quail, snakes and other creatures with which it shares these fields and forests.

And not long after dawn on many mornings, Madison is out checking on the whereabouts of the red wolves that remain, even as he and his small team work to help their numbers grow.

“We’re definitely on an upswing,” he said on a recent day as he drove through the refuge. But, he added, “Until we get to the point where it’s self-sustaining, it’s always fragile.”

The early light glinted through his red and white beard. In his truck, he carried an antenna and a handheld receiver. The collars of each red wolf in the wild have a different frequency, and he flipped through them until he arrived at the signal for 2191 — a male that Madison hopes might father another litter of pups in the coming year.

The red wolf was nearby, though nowhere in sight. But the steady beep of his collar let Madison know that, for now, he was alive and well.