NATURALIST'S 



NOTEBOOK 



. Coyote Influx 1 r 

 Threatens Rec . Wolf 



Suiwa. 



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jyotes. In popular conscious- 

 ness, they slink through sagebrush and 

 sand under a desert sky, frighten ranchers' 

 cattle and howl at the Arizona moon. In 

 truth, coyotes are just as likely to prowl 

 under a North Carolina sky — and 

 biologists with the federal red wolf re- 

 establishment program are the ones who 

 are howling. 



Though red wolves and coyotes are 

 different species, they are both canids, and 

 all canids — wolves, foxes, dogs — can 

 interbreed. In eastern North Carolina, 

 where the endangered red wolves have 

 established a tenuous wild population, the 

 coyotes' inroads could spell disaster. If 

 coyotes and red wolves continue to mix, 

 the red wolves could disappear once 

 again, replaced by hybrids or coyote- wolf 

 "mutts." 



This is not a new problem. In fact, 

 interbreeding helped bring the red wolf to 

 the brink of extinction in the first place. 

 Until early this century, Cams rufus was 

 common throughout the southeast. As the 

 decades progressed, hunting, trapping and 

 clearing land for agriculture forced 

 dwindling red wolf populations into ever 

 smaller areas. 



By the 1960s, red wolves fought for 

 survival on pockets of land in Texas and 

 Louisiana interbreeding with coyotes as 

 their numbers rapidly declined. Alarmed 

 officials from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife 



By Renee Wolcott Shannon 



Service began trapping the wolves in the 

 1970s, afraid the species would vanish. 

 Out of hundreds of animals, they found 

 only 14 pure red wolves. These became 

 the captive breeding stock for an 

 experimental wolf re-establishment 

 program. 



In 1987, the federal program released 

 its first red wolves into Alligator River 

 National Wildlife Refuge, a gift of almost 

 120,000 acres from the Nature Conser- 

 vancy. Considered extinct in the wild, the 

 zoo-bred wolves struggled to adapt to 

 their new environment of woods, fields 

 and swamp. 



Over the next five years, the Fish and 

 Wildlife Service released an additional 40 

 wolves onto the refuge. While some 

 succumbed to vehicle accidents, deep 

 water or illness, the Alligator River site 

 lacked one important threat: coyotes. 



"One of the many reasons Alligator 

 River was chosen in the first place was 

 because it was coyote free," says Scott 

 McLellan, biological technician with the 

 red wolf program. 



For several years, the red wolves 

 flourished, relatively safe from other 

 canids that could introduce new genes to 

 the pool. "We've had a lot of biological 

 successes," says Jennifer Gilbreath, 

 outreach coordinator and biologist with 

 the red wolf program. After a few initial 

 setbacks, the population began to grow on 



its own, producing new generations of 

 wild-bom wolves. 



"They've been reproducing for 12 

 years now," McLellan says. "They 

 reproduce fine." Today, more than 80 red 

 wolves reside on one million acres in 

 northeastern North Carolina from the 

 Pocosin Lakes and Alligator River refuges 

 to Lake Mattamuskeet and surrounding 

 private lands. 



In the entire nation, there are about 

 170 in captivity and around 10 on islands, 

 Gilbreath says — a strong comeback from 

 14 individuals only two decades ago. Yet 

 as red wolves have rebounded in North 

 Carolina coyotes have moved into the 

 area once again threatening the species' 

 genetic purity. "Some people have illegally 

 brought coyotes into these areas," 

 McLellan says. Others have simply 

 migrated from western counties, where 

 they have been common for years. 



Coyotes are survivors, McLellan says. 

 In the past century, they have spread 

 through the country's 48 contiguous states, 

 including North Carolina. "They're a very 

 adaptable species. They can live in the 

 desert, the mountains, the forest, the 

 swamp. I guess you could say they're 



Continued 



Red wolf releases began in 1987. 



Biirnm Craufonl/USFWS 



22 WINTER 2000 



