In September of last year, the US Fish and Wildlife Service made an announcement concerning the future of the red wolf recovery program in eastern North Carolina that called for undermining decades of hard work restoring red wolves to a small portion of their historic range and threatened the very survival of the species in the wild. The agency called for significantly reducing the range of the existing wild population by removing individual red wolves from the wild in order to increase the captive breeding population—something the scientific community has said is unnecessary and harmful to red wolf survival.

In June, the USFWS will hold two public hearings in eastern North Carolina and collect written comments on the future management of the wild population in the five counties where the wolves currently live. In the last three years, the red wolf population has declined dramatically, from approximately 100 animals to fewer than 30 monitored wolves and only three known breeding pairs. The population is now in such dire condition that leading scientists have said that continuing to manage in this manner would likely lead to the species’ extirpation within eight years.