Wolf: The Dispossessed, Part 2

Piece Description

Red wolves used to roam free across most of the eastern United States, from Maine to Florida, from Missouri to Texas, one of the top dogs in the food chain. No one knows what their population was back then, but it was extremely large. As settlers established farms, red wolves would drop by uninvited for a chicken dinner or a meal of the rarest beef.  Farmers began shooting the wolves to protect their live stock. They even offered bounties for their pelts. By 1970 there were few red wolves left in America. When biologists surveyed the field they found only 17 red wolves, 14 of which could breed. They were taken to Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium in Tacoma Washington where biologists watched as these canids began to breed in captivity.

Seventeen years later, a handful of these Adams and Eves were flown east to an Eden in eastern North Carolina. The wolves went forth and really multiplied. This place called Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge became home for this species that once teetered on the brink of extinction.

Yesterday Diane Hendry told me a lot about the red wolves. And Diane Hendry should know: she’s outreach coordinator of the Red Wolf Recovery Program. We were sitting at a picnic bench in a grove of loblolly pines in the middle of the wildlife refuge, miles and miles away from the haunts of man.

Even in this remote section of North Carolina, red wolves are not completely protected. Part of that has to do with their physical resemblance to one of the most resilient of all canids.