Red Wolf Recovery Program. 4th Quarter Report, July-September 2011

摘要

The red wolf (Canis rufus) is one of the most endangered canids in the world. Once occurring throughout the eastern and south-central United States, red wolves were decimated by predator-control programs and the loss and alteration of habitats. By the 1970s, these activities had reduced the red wolf population to a small area along the Gulf coast of Texas and Louisiana. To protect the species from extinction, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service initiated efforts to locate and capture as many red wolves as possible for the purposes of establishing a program to breed the species in captivity and one day reintroduce the species into a portion of its former range. More than 400 canids were captured in coastal areas of Texas and Louisiana, but only 17 were identified as pure red wolves. Fourteen of these wolves would become the founding members of the captive-breeding program and the ancestors of all red wolves existing today. The first litter of red wolves born in captivity occurred in 1977. Within a few years red wolves were successfully reproducing in captivity, allowing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to consider reintroducing the species in the wild. In 1987, four male-female pairs of red wolves were released in Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge (ARNWR) in northeastern North Carolina and designated as an experimental population. Since then, the experimental population has grown and the recovery area expanded to include four national wildlife refuges, a Department of Defense bombing range, state-owned lands, and private lands, encompassing about 1.7 million acres. However, interbreeding with the coyote (a species not native to North Carolina) has been recognized as a threat affecting the restoration of red wolves. Currently, adaptive management efforts are making progress in reducing the threat of coyotes to the red wolf population in northeastern North Carolina. Other threats, such as habitat fragmentation, disease, and anthropogenic mortality, are of concern in the restoration of red wolves. Efforts to reduce the threats are presently being explored.