Zerkel reports: "Little can be heard on a cool October day in a remote stretch of North Carolina wetland, until the gunshots ring out."



A captive red wolf. (photo: B. Bartel/USFWS)

Red Wolves on the Brink of Extinction

By Eric Zerkel, The Weather Channel

Little can be heard on a cool October day in a remote stretch of North Carolina wetland, until the gunshots ring out.

A red wolf's body slumps to the ground. Blood seeps into the soil, molding the earth into a coagulated clump of gore. Breathing slows, eyes shut, the heart stops. Now, only around 100 wolves remain.

During a three-week stretch from Oct. 28 to Nov. 19, 2013 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) recovered the bodies of five red wolves with gunshot wounds, and more mysteriously, the frayed collar of a sixth, indicating potential foul play. After more than a month of silence, the USFWS discovered the bullet-ridden body of a seventh red wolf, signaling the rash of deaths may continue into the new year.

All told, nearly 10 percent of red wolves monitored by the USFWS died during the span, putting both the critically endangered species, and recovery efforts, on the brink of extinction yet again.

Anyone found responsible for "illegally taking" or killing the animals is subject to up to a year in prison and $100,000 fine, but the threat of punishment, and a hefty reward for information still hasn't stimulated any leads. According to David Rabon, the coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Red Wolf Program, no tips have landed on his desk.

"At this point we just don't know why," said Rabon.

But as the corpses of wolves pile up, the issue continues to escalate into national prominence, resulting in an undecided legal tug-of-war between conservationists and the state of North Carolina that could have a major impact on one of the most successful endangered species recovery programs in history, all while the red wolf teeters on the brink of extinction.

Once common throughout the southeastern United States, years of habitat loss and hunting decimated the population of red wolves until, in 1980, the USFWS declared the species extinct in the wild.

More than 40 years of recovery efforts have begun to change all of that. After red wolves were declared endangered in 1967 under the Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966, a team of biologists rounded up the remaining wild wolves — just 17 along the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana — and selected 14 to start an in-captivity breeding program.

After 10 years of breeding pups in zoos, the program finally had enough wolves to reintroduce the species back to the wild, and, in 1987, the USFWS did just that, releasing four pairs of red wolves into the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge on North Carolina's northeastern coast.

"When you're looking at a place to reintroduce them [red wolves], habitat is critical, prey availability is critical, and northeastern North Carolina has all of that," said Kim Wheeler, executive director of the Red Wolf Coalition, a non-profit organization that teams up with the USFWS to educate the public on the species.

Now in an area ideal for survival, the population of red wolves experienced a miraculous resurgence of sorts, with wolves emerging from the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge to form packs across a five-county, 1.7 million-acre area on North Carolina's Albemarle Peninsula.

In many ways the program has been a success. Of the estimated 90-110 red wolves in the wild, the USFWS keeps tabs on 61, with the remaining wolves roaming the North Carolina wilderness unabated.

Despite these successes, the dynamics of sustaining a burgeoning population have changed. Over the last three decades a competing canid has invaded the recovery area of the red wolf, complicating recovery efforts and canid-resident relations in the area.

And according to the USFWS, conservationists and wildlife biologists, this competing canid may be at the root of the mysterious rash of gunshot mortalities plaguing the red wolf population.

Enter, the coyote.

The roots of the coyote's emergence in North Carolina stretch back hundreds of years to 1630, when the Massachusetts Bay Colony issued the first bounty for a wolf in the Americas, establishing a trend of killings that would only explode in the hundreds of years to follow.

As settlers pushed into every nook and cranny of the United States, red wolves and their larger cousins, grey wolves, garnered a nasty reputation for raiding livestock and damaging the livelihoods of early settlers.

Eventually the United States government stepped in, offering up lump sums of cash for the eradication of wolves. According to the USFWS, wolf-killing peaked during the early 20th century, and in just years the species was nearly extinct.

Even with wolf populations across the U.S. rebounding in recent years, an unintended consequence of the mass-eradication of the species emerged. Coyotes stepped in to fill the void left behind by wolves, and without the larger predators keeping their numbers in check, population boomed, according the Roland Kays, a scientist at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

Over the last 30 years coyotes began pushing East, spreading across much of the East Coast, even popping up in urban areas like New York City.

In fact, the population of coyotes has boomed to a point that even those tasked with studying the creatures have a hard time pinning down just how many of the canids exist.

"Actually counting the number of coyotes is one of the hardest challenges in wildlife biology," said Kays. "We have no idea how many are out there in different areas. What we do know is that they have definitely increased, and are probably still increasing."

And this influx of coyotes poses problems for the USFWS.

"When this program started coyotes were a rare thing in North Carolina," said Rabon. "Now, they occur basically everywhere."

More coyotes means more interactions between coyotes and red wolves. Those interactions can have potentially damning consequences on conservation efforts. Red wolves and coyotes can interbreed, producing hybrid offspring that muddle the lineage of the wolves, setting back repopulation efforts.

According to Kays, the red wolf's endangered status only exacerbates interbreeding problems.

"Different species will usually breed with each other when one is really really rare," said Kays. "They don't have anyone else to breed with, so they take the next best thing they can get."

To combat interbreeding and lower coyote populations in the area the USFWS captures and sterilizes coyotes, keeping their hormones intact. Sterilized coyotes are then outfitted with radio collars, released back into the wild and utilized by the USFWS to expand the range of red wolves.

"We'll use sterile coyotes to hold territory where we don't have wolves," said Rabon. "Then as the wolf population grows if they [wolves] want to take over an area being held by a coyote we can either go in and remove that coyote, or more likely, the wolf will just go in and kick that coyote out."

Rabon said the USFWS tracks and monitors roughly the same amount of coyotes, 60, as they do red wolves, leaving around 120 radio-collared canids roaming the Albemarle Peninsula.

And, given the similarities between coyotes and red wolves, the USFWS and conservationists believe that some of the gunshot mortalities could be chalked up to a case of mistaken identity.

Differentiating between red wolves and coyotes with the naked eye can be particularly difficult. Rabon said that larger coyotes can weigh 35 to 40 pounds, and while red wolves are typically in the 60-pound range, smaller females can weigh 45 to 50 pounds, infringing on the typical size of a large coyote.

"You're talking about wild animals who don't typically look like our overfed pets, so judging 60 pounds versus 40 pounds at a distance might be incredibly difficult," said Rabon.

"They also look a lot alike; they have a lot of the same colorations. I can certainly see how if you were to see a red wolf in the wild you might think 'Wow, that's a big coyote.'"

Still, that did little to explain why none of the coyotes tracked by the USFWS were killed via gunshot during the same time period the six wolves were lost, a fact Rabon chalks up to hunting and the allure of the "big catch."

"Because it's [the red wolf] a larger animal it becomes that much more of a prize," said Rabon. "It's just like going after the big buck if you're deer hunting. You'll take the doe, but you prefer the buck."

The big catch mentality may be to blame for the uptick in gunshot-related red wolf deaths, especially after controversial hunting rules passed by the North Carolina Wildlife Resource Commission (NCWRC) in recent years put canids in the cross hairs of many North Carolinians.

As late as January 2012 hunting laws in North Carolina allowed the limitless year-round take of coyotes, even within the five county red wolf recovery area, but a new rule proposed by the NCWRC later that year would put the hunt for coyotes in the spotlight, literally.

The NCWRC pushed forward a controversial coyote hunting rule that gave licensed hunters on private lands permission to kill coyotes using spotlights, or other forms of artificial light, even within the confines of the five counties that comprise the red wolf recovery area.

The NCRWRC justified the proposed rule in a statement, saying that night hunting would provide an effective means to control the population of coyotes, which the NCRWRC called a "non-native" species that is "destructive to the landscape, livestock and domestic animals."

In response, conservationists, including the Red Wolf Coalition, filed a lawsuit against the state of North Carolina to prevent the passage of the rule, which they believed would compromise the lives of additional red wolves.

"People who come here to hunt, or people who live here need to be 100 percent certain before they pull that trigger that they know that what they're aiming at is a coyote," said Kim Wheeler, the executive director of the Red Wolf Coalition. "We just want people to be certain that they are aiming at whatever their target is."

The USFWS echoed conservationists' concerns in an April 16, 2012 comment letter that responded to the NCWRC's proposed coyote hunting rule change.

"The Service is concerned that the proposed night hunting regulations will result in red wolves being mistaken for coyotes and inadvertently shot," the letter said. "In recent years, gunshot mortality has become a serious threat to the wild population of red wolves. From 1987 to 2003, the Red Wolf Recovery Program documented an average of less than two wolves killed per year by gunshots. Since 2004, red wolves taken by gunshot have substantially increased to about seven wolves per year ....these recent gunshot mortalities have occurred during daylight hours. Providing additional hunting opportunities at night will likely exacerbate the problem and increase the number of animals lost."

And though the total number of red wolf mortalities decreased in 2013 from 19 to 14, the number killed by gunshot increased from eight in 2012 to nine in 2013, solidifying these concerns.

"When you compare gunshot mortality, that's nine animals out of a total of 14 killed, and last year it was eight animals out of a total of 19," said Rabon. "So proportionately the number of gunshot-related mortalities is greater."

Despite the USFWS's letter, the NCWRC passed an identical temporary rule allowing hunters to hunt coyotes at night while the permanent rule underwent legal scrutiny. As a result, during a five-month period From July 2012 to November 2012, North Carolinians were legally able to shoot coyotes at night by spotlight.

Then, in November, the courts would finally weigh-in. In response to the USFWS's letter, along with roughly 30 concern-laden others, a Wake County, N.C. Superior Court Judge issued a temporary injunction halting the temporary rule.

But it would not last.

North Carolina's General Assembly was given the opportunity to pass legislation that would've eliminated the night hunting rule, but declined, effectively passing the rule at the end of of July 2013.

With the rule now in place, the conservationists' lawsuit against the state died, and efforts to combat night time hunting seemed all but dead, too.

Until October 2013, when conservationists escalated their efforts by filing a federal complaint against the NCWRC alleging the state agency violated the Endangered Species Act by allowing coyote hunts that could potentially lead to more gunshot-related red wolf deaths.

According to Sierra Weaver, a senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, the legal group that filed the case on behalf of the conservation groups, the lawsuit aims to "require the state of North Carolina to come into compliance with the Endangered Species Act, and end the illegal killing of red wolves."

"We're trying to ensure the protection of one of the most endangered species in the world," said Weaver. "Gunshot mortality is an increasing threat for this species. Because of the contribution of coyote hunting to this threat, we're trying to take that out as a cause of death for this species. Because the state of North Carolina authorizes hunting of coyotes, they are responsible for the take of red wolves that occurs during the course of that activity under the Endangered Species Act."

In December, the group took legal action a step further by filing a motion for preliminary injunction, asking for the Federal Courts to put a stop to coyote hunts while the lawsuit undergoes the legal process.

With the issue escalating to the federal level, the NCWRC fired back at conservationists in a public statement, according to the Charlotte Observer.

“This misguided lawsuit undermines the very law that the Southern Environmental Law Center and their clients claim to be defending,” NCWRC Executive Director Gordon Myers said. “These actions erode the local public support critical to successful reintroduction of a predator species.”

The courts will move toward a decision on whether or not to grant the injunction Feb. 11, 2014, but until the legal dust settles, hunters across North Carolina can still step into the darkness, fire-up a spotlight, and shoot on sight.

"Even during the day it can be difficult to identify one [a red wolf or a coyote]," said Rabon. "At night it certainly would be even more difficult to do that."

Even if the USFWS can solve the "why" to the wolf killings, they'll still need to contend with the consequences of the seven deaths.

Red wolves rely heavily on the set social structure of a pack, comprised of five to eight wolves, to grow and maintain the population. One component of that pack involves breeding pairs, or "breeders" — two wolves that bond for life and mate once a year in February, according to the USFWS.

According to Rabon, all seven wolves killed during the span were adults, and by extension, potential breeders.

"Wolves are very much like our own families. Think about when a Mom or Dad die in a family, it's that same sort of situation, all of the sudden that pack dynamic, that family dynamic, changes," said Wheeler of the Red Wolf Coalition. "That's where that impact is, it goes beyond just a single death."

These breeder deaths can damn populations in the future, according to Rabon.

"Those breeding animals are what actually contribute to the growth of your population. So if you lose one animal in a small population that has a major impact," said Rabon. "If that animal also happens to be one of your proven breeders, now you've just broken up your pack, you've lost the potential for reproduction from that animal, and that can have an even larger impact on the population as a whole."

More specifically, less breeders means less puppies, and less puppies means less wolves over time.

Statistics released by the USFWS seem to support that trend. The total number of red wolf pups born during whelping season has decreased each of the last three years, from 43 pups in 2010, to 34 pups in 2013.

If those trends continue the red wolf could face a grim fate, a fact that conservationists like Kim Wheeler must deal with each time another red wolf corpse turns up.

"I just want to know why they're doing it. Is it for the thrill? Is it an act of cowardice? What is it? And then I'm sad. I know it's another animal, and I know it's going to have an effect on this population," said Wheeler.

"They've come so far, and they just deserve better from us."