America’s Wolf: The Red Wolf
By Aspen Stevanovski
Everybody knows about gray wolves (Canis lupus), the robust canids made famous during the Yellowstone reintroduction. But what most people forget about are the critically endangered red wolf (Canis rufus) native to the southeastern and midwestern United States. Those who do know about red wolves might have questions or heard concerning things about these animals like “are red wolves just gray wolf-coyote hybrids” or “will red wolves decimate our whitetails”? Let’s dive into some facts about America’s only endemic wolf, the red wolf.
What is a Red Wolf?
Intermediate in size of the coyote (Canis latrans) and gray wolf (Canis lupus), red wolves once ranged the southeastern United States. Due to overhunting, bounties and drastic habitat loss, red wolf numbers plummeted. Biologists trapped the last wild red wolves from a tiny area in southeastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana and formed a captive breeding program. Red wolves were declared extinct in the wild in 1980. In 1987, the first red wolves were released back into the wild in northeastern North Carolina; this historic release predated the more famous Yellowstone gray wolf release and became the backbone of other such release programs.
Red wolf numbers steadily grew to a peak of approximately 120 wolves in the release area in 2012 before plummeting due to an increase of illegal or accidental gunshot and vehicle strikes. Currently, there are fewer than 30 wild red wolves with over 260 in zoos and wildlife conservation centers as part of the captive breeding program. To increase wild populations and genetic diversity, pup fostering occurs whenever possible, when a similarly aged pup or pups born in captivity are placed in a wild den when they’re about 2 weeks old. Female red wolves are excellent mothers and immediately accept the extra little one(s).
All known adult red wolves are fitted with a bright orange tracking collar as soon as they’re big enough and have been captured. The orange collar serves multiple purposes: it allows biologists to monitor them, helps identify them as a protected species (unlike coyotes), and the reflective material on the collar helps minimize vehicle strikes.
Red wolves are incredibly shy and not dangerous to people; there have been zero instances of aggressive or attacks by red wolves since reintroduction in the eighties. Additionally, there have been only 10 ____ instances of red wolves killing small livestock or domestic animals in the over 36 years since reintroduction. Any such loss is monetarily compensated by the Red Wolf Coalition.
Will Red Wolves Destroy the Deer Population?
No, they won’t.
That’s the short answer; red wolves and white-tailed deer historically lived together, and healthy ecosystems evolved with both present. Additionally, if you look at the white-tailed harvest success rates during the years red wolves hit their peak, there’s no drop in those success rates despite higher presence of red wolves in those areas. Red wolves do prey on white tailed deer but also readily eat rabbits, wild hogs, raccoons, nutria, rats, mice, and muskrats.
What red wolves certainly will do is push out coyotes from their territories as well as happily eat raccoons and other predators that are known nest raiders of ground birds like wild turkeys and bobwhite quail. A current study postulates that because of this, red wolf presence can actually benefit ground nesters. Since red wolves are larger than coyotes and more likely to hunt cohesively, they might be able to help with adult wild hogs better than their smaller cousins.
Are Red Wolves “Gray Wolf-Coyote Hybrids?”
Possibly the biggest controversy around red wolves is whether or not they are a unique species or just a hybrid. Red wolves are a unique species - Canis rufus- as demonstrated by a massive study in 2019 by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
Although they are closely related to coyotes, even more so than gray wolves, this doesn’t negate that red wolves are a distinct species. In fact, another archeological study (Sacks et al 2021) demonstrated that both red wolves and coyotes were present in North America before gray wolves crossed the land bridge from Asia thousands of years ago, making it physically impossible for the red wolf to be a hybrid between the two. Additionally, if you were to cross a gray wolf and a coyote, the result is not a red wolf. The red wolf is truly America’s wolf.
How are Hybrids Prevented?
Canid genetics are tricky to understand because ANY species in the Canis genus (which includes red wolves, coyotes, gray wolves, jackals, and our pet dogs) can technically interbreed. However, each of these species is still unique, but confusion and mixture can happen when some populations get too tiny.
Typically, a red wolf will defend its territory from a coyote. However, if a red wolf cannot find another red wolf mate, they may hybridize with a coyote out of desperation; preventing such hybrids is essential to red wolf management. Multiple steps are taken to prevent this: wild red wolves are closely monitored and strategically introduced to another red wolf mate - from the captive breeding program or other wild unpaired red wolves - and all wild litters are genetically checked to ensure there is no hybridization.
Coyote sterilizations also occur in the red wolf population area. Coyotes in areas surrounding red wolf territories are trapped, sterilized, given white collars (old coyote collars are black) and re-released. Sterilized coyotes will still protect their territory from other coyotes but are unable to breed. It’s to the benefit of any hunter not to shoot these “placeholder” coyotes as they can’t reproduce so they have lower prey needs and will keep other coyotes out.
America’s Wolf
Red wolves are America’s wolf and an essential animal to maintaining ecosystem balance. The road to recovering this species has been bumpy but with the collaboration of hunters, landowners, and more, the conservation of the red wolf is possible.