Re-introduction and recovery of the red wolf in the southeastern USA.

Summary

The red wolf (Canis rufus), Critically Endangered and rebuilt from just 14 founding individuals after being deliberately extirpated from the wild by 1980 to save it from extinction and hybridization with coyotes, was reintroduced by the US Fish and Wildlife Service to northeastern North Carolina's Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in 1987, chosen for its absence of coyotes and available prey, with the population designated nonessential experimental. Captive-born wolves were acclimated in enclosures with minimized human contact and given supplemental deer carcasses; an island propagation strategy raised offspring in the wild to produce release candidates already skilled at hunting, and fostering captive-born pups into wild litters boosted numbers and genetic diversity. A second reintroduction in the Great Smoky Mountains, begun in 1991, was terminated due to disease and low pup survival. By 2012, the North Carolina population had grown to 90-110 wolves, the species' only wild population, backed by roughly 200 wolves in accredited zoos; however, coyotes reaching the area in the early 1990s created an ongoing hybridization threat, managed via sterilized coyote territorial placeholders pending replacement by wolves. Major difficulties included human-caused mortality (57% of documented deaths from 1987-2012, with gunshot deaths rising sharply after 2003), disease risks, and coyote gene introgression. The project rates itself partially successful, noting the species survives only as one geographically isolated population rather than the multiple populations the recovery plan calls for, against a long history of cultural hostility toward wolves.