Southern Howl

Red Wolf credit: photo by Peter Frank Edwards

It was 1988 when two South Carolina-born red wolf siblings, just old enough to strike out on their own, were dropped off along the Outer Banks of North Carolina, several hundred miles north of home. The brothers soon found and killed another male, and while the larger of the two stayed on to take over the family he’d orphaned, eventually becoming a father and grandfather many times over, the smaller of the brothers ventured on to look for a family of his own, and within months was found dead, hit by a car.

This family drama, while human-like, is part of the recorded life experience of the modern-day red wolf, the native wolf of the South. Long-legged and long-eared, the shy and skittish wolf is often marked with a cinnamon-burnished coat. At fifty to eighty pounds, it is smaller than the gray wolf of the North and West, and bigger than the seemingly ubiquitous coyote. And it lives a life of happenstance, vulnerable and constrained.

A mere one hundred to one hundred and thirty red wolves roam on 1.7 million acres in northeastern North Carolina, in a contiguous swath of wildlife refuges, military property, and private lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean. For now, this is the wolves’ only safe haven in the wild — a relative safety at that, violated frequently by errant hunting and car traffic. Another two hundred and nine red wolves live in American zoos and captive-breeding centers. In all, those are the only red wolves on earth.

But, through human management and intervention, including near-daily observation in the wild by ground tracking or low-flying biplanes, the precarious population is steadily growing. And the fact that red wolves live to roam again at all, to hunt and howl and rear young, is an absolute against-the-odds story. “What we’re dealing with here is a situation caused by people. We changed the landscape. We affected the red wolf population. And now it’s almost like we’re trying to right the wrongs of the past,” says Art Beyer, a veteran wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and a field coordinator for the red wolf restoration efforts centered around Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in Manteo, North Carolina.

The red wolf was recognized as an endangered species even before the enactment of the Endangered Species Act of 1973. A six-year roundup of the last remaining wild red wolves netted some four hundred animals, but a mere seventeen were deemed to be pure red wolves. That’s how close the species was to being lost. And by 1980, red wolves were, in fact, declared extinct in the wild. By then, captive breeding efforts were under way and early results were good, but knowing that wolves could be captive-bred wasn’t enough. “If the wolves stayed in captivity, we’d only be looking at history,” Beyer says. “It would be better, if it was possible, to let them function in the wild as they would naturally.”

Biologists gave it a try. The first successful experimental release, tracking, and recapture of captive-bred red wolves was on Bulls Island, an uninhabited sea island with a healthy maritime forest that’s part of the Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge, twenty-five miles north of Charleston, South Carolina. Releases would continue there through 2005, but it wasn’t always easy. One female was killed — apparently by an alligator — while she was still caring for young pups. In a fortuitous twist, the father of the pups surprised biologists by taking over and rearing the litter. A female was brought to the island as the intended mate of the alpha male, but within hours of her arrival she abandoned the island and swam south, ending up on a golf course on the Isle of Palms. The male followed.

Sarah Dawsey, a wildlife biologist who assisted with efforts on Bulls Island, remembers a hardy female that lived to be fifteen, twice as long as many wolves in the wild. Nicknamed Old Female, the wolf bore and raised pups year after year with one longtime mate, and when he died, with another devoted male. During those years it was a special experience to visit the island. “Just to see their tracks in the sand,” says Dawsey, “or to know they could possibly be watching you… it’s a pretty neat connection with nature.”

A record fifty-five pups were born at the Alligator River refuge in 2005, and forty-one were born the following year. The wolves have everything they need there — cover, raccoons, rabbits, and deer — but what’s needed are more Alligator Rivers: more wild land on which the wolves can be reintroduced. Next-tier recovery goals are to nearly double the wild population to two hundred and twenty red wolves at three sites, with another three hundred and thirty in captive breeding centers. Dawsey is guardedly optimistic. “There are hardly any contiguous areas left without highways and development,” she says. “That’s going to be a big hurdle.”