Red Wolves

The red wolf (Canis lupus rufus or Canis rufus) is a canine native to the southeastern United States which has a reddish-tawny color to its fur. Morphologically it is intermediate between the coyote and gray wolf, and is very closely related to the eastern wolf of eastern Canada.

The red wolf's proper taxonomic classification — in essence, whether it is an admixture of wolf and coyote or a third, distinct species — has been contentious for well over a century and is still under debate. Because of this, it is sometimes excluded from endangered species lists despite its critically low numbers. Under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service currently recognizes the red wolf as an endangered species and grants protected status. Canis rufus is not listed in the CITES Appendices of endangered species. Since 1996 the IUCN has listed it as a critically endangered species.

Red wolves were originally distributed throughout the southeastern and south-central United States from the Atlantic Ocean to central Texas, southeastern Oklahoma and southwestern Illinois in the west, and in the north from the Ohio River Valley, northern Pennsylvania and southern New York south to the Gulf of Mexico. The red wolf was nearly driven to extinction by the mid-1900s due to aggressive predator-control programs, habitat destruction, and extensive hybridization with coyotes. By the late 1960s, it occurred in small numbers in the Gulf Coast of western Louisiana and eastern Texas.

Fourteen of these survivors were selected to be the founders of a captive-bred population, which was established in the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium between 1974 and 1980. After a successful experimental relocation to Bulls Island off the coast of South Carolina in 1978, the red wolf was declared extinct in the wild in 1980 to proceed with restoration efforts[clarification needed]. In 1987, the captive animals[clarification needed] were released into the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge on the Albemarle Peninsula in North Carolina, with a second release, since reversed[clarification needed], taking place two years later in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Of 63 red wolves released from 1987–1994[clarification needed], the population rose to as many as 100–120 individuals in 2012, but due to the lack of regulation enforcement by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the population has declined to 40 individuals in 2018 and about 14 as of 2019.

The taxonomic status of the red wolf is debated. It has been described as either a species with a distinct lineage, a recent hybrid of the gray wolf and the coyote, an ancient hybrid of the gray wolf and the coyote which warrants species status, or a distinct species that has undergone recent hybridization with the coyote.

The naturalists John James Audubon and John Bachman were the first to suggest that the wolves of the southern United States were different from wolves in its other regions. In 1851 they recorded the "Black American Wolf" as C. l. var. ater that existed in Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Kentucky, southern Indiana, southern Missouri, Louisiana, and northern Texas. They also recorded the "Red Texan Wolf" as C. l. var. rufus that existed from northern Arkansas, through Texas, and into Mexico. In 1912 the zoologist Gerrit Smith Miller Jr. noted that the designation ater was unavailable and recorded these wolves as C. l. floridanus.

In 1937, the zoologist Edward Alphonso Goldman proposed a new species of wolf Canis rufus. Three subspecies of red wolf were originally recognized by Goldman, with two of these subspecies now being extinct. The Florida black wolf (Canis rufus floridanus) (Maine to Florida) has been extinct since 1908 and the Mississippi Valley red wolf (Canis rufus gregoryi) (south-central United States) was declared extinct by 1980. By the 1970s, the Texas red wolf (Canis rufus rufus) existed only in the coastal prairies and marshes of extreme southeastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana. These were removed from the wild to form a captive breeding program and reintroduced into eastern North Carolina in 1987.

In 1967, the zoologists Barbara Lawrence and William H. Bossert believed that the case for classifying C. rufus as a species was based too heavily on the small red wolves of central Texas, from where it was known that there existed hybridization with the coyote. They said that if an adequate number of specimens had have been included from Florida, then the separation of C. rufus from C. lupus would have been unlikely. The taxonomic reference Catalogue of Life classifies the red wolf as a subspecies of Canis lupus. The mammalogist W. Christopher Wozencraft, writing in Mammal Species of the World (2005), regards the red wolf as a hybrid of the gray wolf and the coyote, but due to its uncertain status compromised by recognizing it as a subspecies of the gray wolf Canis lupus rufus.