Wolves, Wild Dogs and Foxes: Page 1 Endangered Species Handbook

Persecution and Hunting

Wolves, Wild Dogs and Foxes: Page 1

Prior to European settlement of North America, two wolf species lived throughout the forests of the East: the widespread Gray Wolf (Canis lupus), the same species that is native to Eurasia, and the Red Wolf (Canis rufus), a uniquely American species of the Southeast. Some biologists estimate that there were 2 million wolves on the continent at this time. European settlers entered the American wilderness and set about killing off these animals. The book, War Against the Wolf. America's Campaign to Exterminate the Wolf, by Rick McIntyre (1995), chronicles the history of this extermination program, based on historical and modern documents. Colonists dug pit traps and filled them with vertical stakes, which impaled wolves falling onto them. When hunters found an animal in the pit, they would leap in and ham-string the cowering wolf. John James Audubon described a farmer who captured wolves in a pit trap, severed the tendons in their hind legs, then tossed the crippled animals into a pack of dogs which tore them apart (McIntyre 1995). The new colonists and their professional hunters set toothed traps that held the animal's leg while the teeth broke through its skin, wounding and breaking bones. Some who captured wolves cut off the lower jaw and turned the animal free to starve (Laycock 1990). Others set them afire, or started forest fires to rid the woods of wolves (Laycock 1990). Strychnine and thallium were placed in meat baits. Wolf pups were ripped apart by dogs, stomped to death, or burned alive in their dens. One predator hunter threw baited fish hooks, attached to lines, into wolf dens, waited until the pups swallowed the hooks, which embedded in their stomachs, then dragged them out of the den and killed them (McIntyre 1995).

Europeans were convinced that wolves hunted humans, even entering towns to kill children as they slept. In truth, wolves are neither ferocious nor killers of people. No case of a non-rabid North American wolf killing a human has ever been documented (McIntyre 1995, Nowak 1999). Very passive when trapped, they do not even attack the trapper as other predators might. Native Americans took wolf pups out of dens for pets without ever being attacked by the parents.

Red Wolves, named for their reddish-brown coats, had other color phases as well. Prior to their near-extinction, they exhibited a range of colors from black to gray and brown. The genes for these color phases were eliminated along with the wolves themselves in predator-control programs. Originally, this wolf inhabited the United States as far west as Oklahoma and eastern Texas, north to Indiana, as well as the southeast. The Red Wolf is the only surviving wolf that evolved in North America. This species and its ancestor, Canis edwardii, had been resident in forests as far north as Pennsylvania since the middle Quaternary epoch (Nowak 1979). Dr. Ronald Nowak, an expert on wild canids, maintains that the Red Wolf is a far more ancient species than the Gray Wolf. The latter species is thought to have evolved more recently in Eurasia, during the early Pleistocene, and migrated into North America across the Bering land bridge that linked the continents (Nowak 1979).

Weighing only 20 to 40 kilograms (44 to 88 pounds), and 660 to 790 millimeters (26 to 31 inches) tall at the shoulder, the Red Wolf is larger than the Coyote (Canis latrans), but smaller than the Gray Wolf. Mating for life, it breeds in February or March, producing two to six pups in March or April. The pair dens in hollow logs or along banks of canals or ditches. These wolves did not usually form packs, but were most often seen in pairs or small family groups. They were systematically trapped, shot and poisoned out of their range. From the 17th century onward, in state after state, these wolves were exterminated to the last animal, pushing this species toward extinction. Federal predator-control programs took some 50,000 Red Wolves from 1937 onward, until they were virtually extinct in the wild (Laycock 1990). It was not until 1962 that this wolf's highly endangered status received any attention from biologists and wildlife officials. Still, no action was taken to stop state trapping and predator-control programs for another 11 years.

By the 1970s, the Red Wolf had been completely exterminated, except a small population that survived in one county in southwestern Louisiana and in adjoining areas of eastern Texas (Carley 1975). Coyotes had moved into the range of the Red Wolf and interbred with some of the last members of the species. This hybridization spelled the demise of wild Red Wolves. It has been suggested that this interbreeding occurred only because Red Wolves had become so rare that they were unable to find mates of their own species. A live-trapping program to capture the last, pure-blooded specimens, as the only way of saving the species, began in 1973 in Texas, funded by the US Endangered Species Act (ESA). Fewer than 100 animals remained. After capture, X-rays were taken of these animals' skulls to determine which were pure-bred and which were hybrids, based on their skull shape and dimensions.

A number of these hybrids, as well as the pure-blooded Red Wolves, were in poor health from mange, heartworm and other parasites when captured (Carley 1975). Their last attempt to survive in the wild had obviously been a difficult one. Their remaining habitat in Texas and Louisiana had become a mosaic of agricultural and residential development, leaving little natural forest. Moreover, they were under constant threat from trappers and hunters. After five years of live-trapping, only 40 pure-blooded Red Wolves were identified, and they were sent for captive breeding at the Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma, Washington. No further Red Wolves were found, and in 1979, Howard McCarley and Curtis Carley of the Red Wolf Recovery Team, authorized under the US Endangered Species Act, announced in a status report, "Recent findings indicate that the only extant subspecies (Canis rufus gregoryi), once occurring from eastern Texas to eastern Mississippi, for all practical purposes is extinct in the wild" (McCarley and Carley 1979). The other subspecies of the Red Wolf, the Florida Red Wolf (Canis rufus floridanus), had become extinct by 1917 (Day 1981). So many wolves of the Florida race, which once ranged into Georgia and southern Tennessee, were black, that this wolf was originally named the Black Wolf. This genetic strain is now lost.

Of the 40 captive Red Wolves, 14 were selected to form the nucleus of a Fish and Wildlife Service-sponsored captive-breeding colony (Nowak 1999). In 1977, offspring were successfully produced, and by 1989, there were 83 descendants, and the last surviving wild-caught Red Wolf died (Nowak 1991). In 1993, the captive colony consisted of more than 187 animals in 31 breeding facilities. By 1995, there were 289 living descendants from the original wild Red Wolves, the majority in Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma, Washington (Nowak 1999). In the mid-1980s, reintroduction programs began with the release of several of the captive-bred wolves to the wild. This was the first time the American government had ever sought to introduce and protect wild populations of wolves, instead of eliminating them. Since the Coyote is now present throughout the Red Wolf's original range, attempts were made to find reintroduction areas without Coyotes to prevent hybridization and competition. In 1987, four pairs of Red Wolves were reintroduced into the 120,000-acre Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, an island in North Carolina without resident Coyotes. A pair released on Bulls Island in Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge in South Carolina produced two pups in 1988. These pups were captured and released in the Alligator River Refuge in 1989. Another pair, introduced to Horn Island off the Mississippi Coast, produced seven pups in May 1989. By the close of 1993, 46 to 60 animals survived in these newly wild populations by Fish and Wildlife Service counts.

In 1991, a pair of Red Wolves and their two pups were set free in Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee. Jan DeBlieu, a writer on endangered species, witnessed the release of the wolf family (McIntyre 1995). This area has resident Coyotes, which arrived in the mid-1980s, and the interaction between the two species will be closely watched. Several Coyotes and the adult Red Wolves have radio transmitters and were tracked by a number of biologists after their release. DeBlieu was present when, soon after their release, the male and pups traveled 2 miles away from the female, who lay quietly in a field. Suddenly the researchers heard the prolonged, low howl of the male wolf and high-pitched yaps of the pups, a song "not heard in the Smokies for one hundred years" (McIntyre 1995). They were calling the female, who ran toward them. This national park receives 8.6 million visitors a year--more than any other park in the system. The visitors tend to stay near roads, however, and most of the park is roadless wilderness. Prey is abundant, and both the adults and pups began catching rodents and rabbits, hunting at dawn to avoid tourists during the day (McIntyre 1995). By late summer 1994, there were seven Red Wolves in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Two more family groups were released the following year, but the available prey in Great Smoky Mountains National Park is limited in the mountainous terrain (Rancourt 1997). As many as 26 wolves lived in the park in 1997 (Rancourt 1997). A few pairs have produced young.

For the most part, these reintroduced wolves have survived with few conflicts with local people, mainly due to the extensive education programs and hearings held by the Fish and Wildlife Service in each area prior to releases. Some private landowners in North Carolina became apprehensive about the potential threat to children and livestock. The Fish and Wildlife Service has paid claimants for losses even when no proof was submitted that it was, in fact, a wolf at fault. One livestock owner admitted that the Red Wolves had become "good neighbors." Yet even these limited reintroductions have provoked resentment in some local communities which harbor ancient prejudices about wolves. The North Carolina state legislature passed a law early in 1995 that defied the US Endangered Species Act, allowing people to kill wolves that attacked livestock. The Fish and Wildlife Service accommodated these concerns by changing its policy in April 1995 to allow killing of Red Wolves thought, but not proven, to be attacking livestock in North Carolina and Tennessee. One of the first wolves killed, male number 464, was shot in 1995 in North Carolina by a landowner who caught him digging under his dog's pen. This wolf had been released the previous year near Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, but prey was scarce, so Fish and Wildlife Service personnel recaptured him and freed him on the mainland. Number 464 had not been guilty of preying on livestock.

Further incidents between residents and Red Wolves occurred in 1997 and 1998, with wolf pups that were attempting to disperse into new territory being trapped. One young wolf that had been taken in a leghold trap in North Carolina was rescued by the Fish and Wildlife Service and returned to a penned enclosure in 1998. The local county representative stated that wolves were unwanted intruders and would be dealt with by residents. This does not bode well for reestablishment of these wolves.

If the Red Wolf survives this irrational prejudice, it may reoccupy many of its original haunts. The threat of hybridization with the Coyote will remain, however, and without corridors of habitat to link reintroduced populations, these wolves risk becoming inbred. With education of the public, one day the Red Wolf may be restored as a natural predator, benefiting its prey and ecosystem.