Red wolves

Extinction is forever, and some people like that.

Photo Credit: Jim McCormac

In 2015, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service granted an exemption under the Endangered Species Act to kill an endangered red wolf in North Carolina after a single person claimed they were unable to trap it.¹ Yet knowing this North Carolina refuge is the only place where the red wolf still exists in the wild, the USFWS still granted this kill pass. By 2020 only 20 were left.

Legal status - protected?

The red wolf was first listed in 1967 as “threatened with extinction” under the Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966² and then it was among the first species listed as an “endangered species” under the new Endangered Species Act of 1973 (along with the gray wolf).³ It is still listed as “endangered”.

They once lived in all of southeastern U.S., from the Central Pennsylvania down the East coast and to the Gulf of Texas. Now the only wild population lives in Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge on the coast of North Carolina.⁴ This is where the remaining 20 left in the world in the wild, live. Despite the unique success of this wild breeding in North Carolina, it has failed in several other attempts in Texas, Florida and the Great Smoky Mountains. In North Carolina, some landowners and hunters objected to the conservation program and poisoned, shot and trapped 95 of them from 1987-2013 leaving a mere 20 surviving members of the pack by 2020.

Is it a species?

The Endangered Species Act requires that what is to be protected, must be a species, not a sub-species. So opponents to protecting the red wolf argued it was a mere sub-species and not eligible for protection under the Endangered Species Act.

(16) The term “species” includes any subspecies of fish or wildlife or plants, and any distinct population segment of any species of vertebrate fish or wildlife which interbreeds when mature. Endangered Species Act, 16 U.S. Code § 1532 (16).

The question of what is a species is not clear but sometimes it has come to mean that species only breed within their own kind; yet the red wolf has bred with coyotes and gray wolves. But those are clearly distinct species.

When the red wolf population neared extinction, they began breeding with coyotes, and in an initial effort to save the red wolf, they searched for the remaining ones among the coyote-red wolf mixed animals. From hundreds captured, only 14 were found to be pure enough to be used as foundation breeding stock for a conservation program. ⁵

When these controversies in science arise in the federal government, the National Academies are often called upon to assemble a group of scientific experts in the field to determine a final informed answer. In 2019, the National Academies convened such a group and one year later, concluded that the red wolf was unequivocally a distinct species from a scientific viewpoint.⁶ This determination meant that the red wolf was eligible for protection under the defintion in the Endangered Species Act.⁷

In the report, they summarized here how the presence of gray wolf and coyote genes in the red wolf could be explained in a distinct species. It turns red wolves are descendants.

Photo credit: Washington Post

A society can be judged by how it treats animals

North Carolina has been a terrible enemy of the red wolf.

When the population started to get a foothold and as many as 150 individual red wolves were counted in the North Carolina Refuge, hunters and landowners successfsully lobbied the Republican-governed North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission to outright oppose the red wolf releases to the refuge in 2010. At North Carolina’s request, the federal U.S. Fish & Wildlife also ceased releasing red wolves into the wild. North Carolina further aided in extermination of the red wolf by allowing hunting of this endangered species. Finally in 2018, a federal district court ordered the US Fish & Wildlife to stop issuing exemptions that were in violation of their own rules.⁸ Yet, that official issuing blatantly illegal exemptions is still the Regional Director. ⁹Then again, in 2021, the court granted the temporary injunction requested by the Red Wolf Coalition against the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service from releasing breeding pairs not prepared to enter the wild and failing to develop the necessary conservation plan.¹⁰

North Carolina attempted to circumvent its obligation to obey federal law by setting up the red wolves for ultimate slaughter by allowing coyote hunting throughout the red wolf territory.¹¹ Red wolves can be confused with coyotes. (This is often the defense to a red wolf killing.)

“Wildlife are not the property of landowners but belong to the public and are managed by state and federal governments for the public good. . .” ¹²

The Honorable Terrence Boyle

How we got here

Wolves have long been feared and revered. Colonists began the process of eradication from the earliest days, when legislatures set bounties on wolf hides at the same time they set bounties on Native Americans, for the same reason. In the early colonial days, wealthy farmers took advantage of the bounties and cash received for them; but as decades rolled on, Native Americans were enlisted to bring in wolf bounties. In the southeastern U.S., this was a way of life for many Native Americans especially those dispossessed of their lands. Despite their own traditions and stories of wolves¹³, the desperation of survival drove Native Americans to assimilate into jobs expected of them.¹⁴

Wilburn Waters, from the Cheraw/Catawba/Lumbee Tribe, born in 1812 western North Carolina was a legendary hunter. He lived alone in the mountains and was called on by the settlers of southwestern Virginia and northwestern North Carolina to eradicate bears and wolves for the public safety. He has been noted as one of the top ten bear hunters of the century, and killed a notable number of wolves, too. He would carry the hides to the neighboring county of Alexander about 50 miles away to cash them in for currency that would take him through the next season. Near the end of his life, he eventually earned enough money to purchase 200 acres in the area where his family’s land had been taken by settlers.¹⁵ Because he was not a white settler you have probably never heard of him, and instead know names like Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett who lived and hunted in the same territory. Wilburn Waters was my 3x Great Uncle. To think of killing a wolf is heartbreaking, Wilburn Waters saved a couple of baby bears as pets rather than kill them, and in another time when his own extinction was not so threatened, I would like to think my uncle would have joined the conservation movement for wolves, today.

We are all a product of our environment, whether by choice or not, but we do have the power to change it. If we can only change before extinction, because despite hopes and dreams and promises of genetic cloning, we have not yet reestablished the mastadon. Extinction is still, forever.

With so many endangered animals in the wild, some of which I have written about in unintended consequence — bison, manatees and bald eagles, why the red wolf, now? It is at a crisis point. It is one of the most endangered candids in the world and is on the IUCN Red List, which is the world’s list of endangered species. But it is also for what it represents. Like the decimation of the bison and the indigenous Plains Native Nations that relied on it, I see the decimation of the red wolf with the decimation of Native people in North Carolina and the entire southeast. Just like the red wolf narrowly escaped extinction so far, Native Americans who still live in their traditional communities in North Carolina today, are still where industry goes to lay their gas pipelines,¹⁶ mine¹⁷ and dispose of agricultural waste,¹⁸¹⁹ leaving a series of events that will lead to ultimate degrading health and genocide. We will be judged as a society about how we treat its weakest (politically powerless) members.²⁰

Extinction is forever, and sadly, some people like that.

1. https://www.publicnewsservice.org/2015-06-24/endangered-species-and-wildlife/mother-red-wolf-killing-a-significant-loss-in-north-carolina/a46838-1 This exception doesn’t met the definition of an acceptabl take permit. See the “red wolf rule” 50 CFR Sec. 1784(c).

2. https://ecos.fws.gov/docs/recovery_plan/Draft_Revised_Recovery_Plan_Red_Wolf_2022_1.pdf

3. The gray wolf was declared extinct and the last one was shot in Yellowstone in 1926. Since that time gray wolves have been reintroduced into Yellowstone. In 1995 and 1996, 31 Canadian gray wolves were released in Yellowstone, but killings persist even today. See https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/the-wolf-that-changed-america-wolf-wars-americas-campaign-to-eradicate-the-wolf/4312/ .

4. https://www.fws.gov/refuge/alligator-river

5. https://www.fws.gov/project/red-wolf-recovery-program

6. https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/assessing-the-taxonomic-status-of-the-red-wolf-and-the-mexican-gray-wolf

7. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/04/02/there-was-actually-study-determine-if-red-wolves-are-wolves-answer-could-have-doomed-them/

8. Red Wolf Coal. v. United States Fish & Wildlife Serv., 346 F. Supp. 3d 802 (E.D.N.C. 2018) at https://casetext.com/case/coalition-v-us-fish-wildlife-serv-2# .

9. https://www.fws.gov/staff-profile/leopoldo-leo-miranda-castro

10. Red Wolf Coal. v. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Serv., No. 2:20-CV-75-BO (E.D.N.C. Jan. 21, 2021) at https://casetext.com/case/red-wolf-coal-v-us-fish-wildlife-serv

11. https://www.ncwildlife.org/Connect-With-Us/temporary-rules-approved-for-coyote-hunting-in-red-wolf-area

12. Red Wolf Coal. v. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Serv., 346 F. Supp. 3d 802, 814 (E.D.N.C. 2018) at https://casetext.com/case/coalition-v-us-fish-wildlife-serv-2# .

13. http://www.native-languages.org/legends-wolf.htm

14. Dissertation, Samuel Taylor Elswick, “Predator Management and Colonial Culture: 1600-1741. . .” (2005) College of William & Mary at page 86 at https://scholarworks.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6489&context=etd

15. https://www.newrivernotes.com/the-life-and-adventures-of-wilburn-waters/#

16. https://bittersoutherner.com/a-pipeline-in-the-sand-atlantic-coast-lumbee-tribe

17. https://www.npr.org/2022/11/12/1131365516/a-proposed-lithium-mine-presents-a-climate-versus-environment-conflict (near the Catawba Nation which was once a part of North Carolina).

18. https://mercyforanimals.org/blog/indigenous-scholar-shares-how-factory-farms/

19. https://e360.yale.edu/features/chicken-frenzy-a-state-awash-in-hog-farms-faces-a-poultry-boom

20. Attributed to Ghandi but there is no evidence he ever said it. Hubert Humphrey said it in a speech https://www.columbian.com/news/2016/nov/11/letter-quote-from-humphrey-not-gandhi/ (I have paraphrased his quote.)