I’ve read a million articles over the decades about how “race” couldn’t possibly exist because there are blurry boundaries between the races. But I’ve also read a few dozen articles over the years about the scientifically blurry boundaries among the species of canids, which is a sizable legal issue due to the Endangered Species Act. But nobody says “species” does not exist.

From the NYT today:

Red Wolves Need Emergency Protection, Conservationists Say

By JOANNA KLEIN MAY 31, 2016 Conservation groups submitted an emergency petition last week requesting that the United States Fish and Wildlife Service increase protection for the only wild population of red wolves left in the world. Red wolves, which are bigger than coyotes, but smaller than gray wolves, are the only wolf species found completely within the United States. … In By 1980, red wolves were declared extinct in the wild, and the last animals were gathered and bred, then reintroduced in North Carolina in 1987. They were the first federally-listed species to be returned to their native habitat, and have served as models for other programs. Recently the population has declined by more than 50 percent in just two years. There are only 45 to 60 red wolves now living in the wild, and they are threatened, mostly by hunters mistaking them for coyotes and shooting them, said Tara Zuardo, a wildlife lawyer at the Animal Welfare Institute. … It also seeks an upgrading of the status of red wolves, which are endangered, from “nonessential” to “essential.” The change in status would grant reserved habitat to the species and require consultations with biologists over how changes to land use would affect the wolves. The petition aims to close loopholes in the Endangered Species Act: The conservation groups also say provisions for “nonessential” species make it easy to shoot red wolves without punishment. … But some private landowners are concerned that establishing a critical habitat for red wolves will allow the federal government to control use of their land, which they lease for hunting deer and wild turkey, Ms. Zuardo said. Even if the Fish and Wildlife Service were to end its project in North Carolina, it plans to continue working to establish self-sustaining wild populations elsewhere in their native range.

Yet, from the NYT in 2014, a discussion of the government’s anti-miscegenation campaign of sterilizing coyotes to protect the racial purity, such as it is, of the red wolf.

Should Red Wolves Be Allowed to Mate With Coyotes?

By MOISES VELASQUEZ-MANOFF AUGUST 19, 2014 In the past century, a new medium-size predator has appeared in the Northeast. Some call it the coywolf; others prefer ”Eastern coyote.” In times past, the animal was called ”coydog.” All monikers are somewhat correct: The most recent genetic analysis suggests that the animal is roughly one-quarter wolf and two-thirds coyote. The remainder of its genome comes from dogs. The animal is one of several hybrids I wrote about in the magazine this past weekend. The coywolf was born, scientists think, above the Great Lakes, where, in the 19th century, wolf hunting and habitat disturbance prompted different canid species to mate. The resulting wolflike brawn allows the hybrid to hunt the abundant woodland deer, its coyotelike wiliness permits it survive in a humanized landscape and its doglike tolerance of people may help it thrive in one of the most densely populated parts of the country. By all accounts, the hybrid’s genome is one of its major strengths, but the animal’s very adaptability may threaten another species. The red wolf, which once ranged widely throughout the Southeast, is critically endangered. In 1987, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began releasing captive-bred wolf pairs onto a swampy spit of land in coastal North Carolina as part of a recovery program. The wolves fared well — until the 1990s, when coyotes showed up and began mating with them. If widespread interbreeding continues, it might in theory cause the red wolves to disappear into the larger wave of advancing coyotes. How, then, could the red wolves be protected from cross-species breeding? Even if you get rid of some of the coyotes, which are probably of the Northeastern hybrid variety, others move in. So Fish and Wildlife officials began capturing the offending coyotes, sterilizing and returning them to the wild: the sterile animals create a kind of buffer zone by holding territory, keeping other fertile coyotes at bay and thus preventing hybridization. But why do we need that buffer zone? Robert Wayne, a geneticist at U.C.L.A., thinks the red wolf is itself a hybrid. When officials captured what individuals they could find in the 1970s, the beleaguered animal already had coyotes among its ancestors, Wayne says. He argues that red wolves should be allowed to mate with coyotes — that natural selection should sort out the question of what animal is best for that landscape. David Rabon, who coordinates the Red Wolf Recovery Program, doesn’t agree. Today’s red wolves remain separate from the encroaching coyotes in part because of active, human protection, he says. Without it, they might disappear as large canid predators that play a unique ecological function. Behind this debate lurks the larger question: What’s the right conservation philosophy when it comes to hybrids? Should we conserve genetic diversity in any form, including hybrids, or only in what are thought to be pure species? Should landscapes — even those most affected by human influence — ”choose” their own animals, or should we endeavor to conserve species as we imagine they once were? In practice, the answer seems to depend.

I don’t actually have strong opinions on these specific questions, but I find the arguments fascinating and illuminating. One thing I can say for sure is that nobody should opinionize about the reality of race without first reading up on the red wolf and its relatives.