Silence of the Wolves
Cyna Woodard | December 2017
It was silent.
My mama's newspaper blew across the porch on a hot night-time breeze. I had highlighted yet another headline- “Reward Increases for Infomation on Red Wolf Poisoned in Tyrrell County.”
I leaned against the wooden post of a security light and listened.
I should have heard howling.
The red wolf, (Canis Rufus) was once a keystone predator all across the southeast and eastern United States. Imagine a large, skinny dog, smattered with the color of a fox, and active at the same time as the deer, dawn and dusk. Rarely do they attack anything larger than an obese raccoon or at most a runt of a white tail deer, but that fact hasn’t seemed to have been absorbed by many residents of Hyde, Washington, Tyrrell, Dare , and Beaufort counties in North Carolina- the last places on earth where red wolves live in the wild.
Red Wolves are critically endangered, with roughly 40 existing in the wild, their territory stretching across largely private lands and some federal parks, known as The Red Wolf Recovery Experimental Population Area . Due to intentional eradication programs in the 1900’s under the guise of “predator control” the red wolf was feared as a danger to cattle and hunted for bounty money. As a result, populations were decimated by the 1960s’ and declared extinct in the wild in 1980, when the last remnant population of 17 wolves were captured along the gulf coast to be bred in captivity.
The red wolf is capable of surviving in multiple habitat types, including pocosins, agricultural fields,(especially those planted with taller crops such as cotton or corn) and areas of mixed forest and wetland . They hunt mostly rodents, racoons, and any smaller mammals, although they will opportunistically eat carrion. This diet illustrates the vast misconceptions most people have about wolves- Far from the image sold to us of red wolves lurking just beyond our fences waiting to attack our cows and cousins, the red wolf actually fears and avoids areas of human activity, and can instead be found stalking rabbits in an isolated field.
Reintroduced in 1987 following a successful breeding program, a small population of Red Wolves exists in the wild in Eastern N.C. Today, 70% of red wolf deaths are due to deliberate human killings, through gunshots or poisoning. A recent study has shown that between 1999 and 2007, no red wolf in the wild was recorded to have lived long enough to die of old age. Tellingly, survival rates for this creature are lowest during the fall and winter hunting seasons. While there are laws on the books against the willful killing of one of these animals, the red wolf’s support from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service is waning. After a request to end the Red Wolf Recovery Program by the North Carolina WildLife Resources Commission, the introductions of captive bred wolves into the wild has stopped, as well as other vital wolf protection activities, such as sterilizing local coyotes (which are invasive to N. C) to prevent inbreeding.
So why are conservation groups such as the Red Wolf Coalition working so diligently to make sure this species, that everyone seems to prefer either dead or kept captive like a museum piece in a zoo, continues to survive in the wild and indeed grow and spread its populations?
Keystone species are ones that behave as pillars of their own particular ecosystems. Their habits act in numerous ways to maintain ecological stability, or to be more of a hippie about it, the balance of nature. Without the Red Wolf, populations of roadkill-sized herbivores are left uncontrolled, meaning that the many native plants in the area are being consumed so heavily it impacts plant’s ability to prevent soil erosion, promote biodiversity, provide food for pollinators, and even sequester carbon. And in the absence of Red Wolves, small mammal’s blossoming populations can feed population growth of the problematic Coyote.
Unmanaged populations of rabbits and other herbivores especially pose a danger in our new reality of climate change. With droughts, hurricanes, and floods all made more common, more intense, and less predictable, immense and increasing stress is beginning to be placed on agriculture. Overgrown population of herbivores could easily ruin what was left of an already damaged harvest, a loss that will be keenly felt as prices rise for what little food there is and people begin going hungry.
While I was thinking, the newspaper had blown under the azalea bushes at the corner of the house. After retrieving it, I walked back towards the screen door- I would later show my aging parents the headline and ask if they had ever seen one of these animals, or known any people who eliminated them. Their experiences with the Red Wolf were all in the past, but I was terrified for the future - in our new reality of climate instability, we cannot afford to lose any creature that can serve as a stop gap between danger and disaster.
To me, the most frightening thing about the Red Wolf is its silence.
Cyna Woodard | December 2017
It was silent.
My mama's newspaper blew across the porch on a hot night-time breeze. I had highlighted yet another headline- “Reward Increases for Infomation on Red Wolf Poisoned in Tyrrell County.”
I leaned against the wooden post of a security light and listened.
I should have heard howling.
The red wolf, (Canis Rufus) was once a keystone predator all across the southeast and eastern United States. Imagine a large, skinny dog, smattered with the color of a fox, and active at the same time as the deer, dawn and dusk. Rarely do they attack anything larger than an obese raccoon or at most a runt of a white tail deer, but that fact hasn’t seemed to have been absorbed by many residents of Hyde, Washington, Tyrrell, Dare , and Beaufort counties in North Carolina- the last places on earth where red wolves live in the wild.
Red Wolves are critically endangered, with roughly 40 existing in the wild, their territory stretching across largely private lands and some federal parks, known as The Red Wolf Recovery Experimental Population Area . Due to intentional eradication programs in the 1900’s under the guise of “predator control” the red wolf was feared as a danger to cattle and hunted for bounty money. As a result, populations were decimated by the 1960s’ and declared extinct in the wild in 1980, when the last remnant population of 17 wolves were captured along the gulf coast to be bred in captivity.
The red wolf is capable of surviving in multiple habitat types, including pocosins, agricultural fields,(especially those planted with taller crops such as cotton or corn) and areas of mixed forest and wetland . They hunt mostly rodents, racoons, and any smaller mammals, although they will opportunistically eat carrion. This diet illustrates the vast misconceptions most people have about wolves- Far from the image sold to us of red wolves lurking just beyond our fences waiting to attack our cows and cousins, the red wolf actually fears and avoids areas of human activity, and can instead be found stalking rabbits in an isolated field.
Reintroduced in 1987 following a successful breeding program, a small population of Red Wolves exists in the wild in Eastern N.C. Today, 70% of red wolf deaths are due to deliberate human killings, through gunshots or poisoning. A recent study has shown that between 1999 and 2007, no red wolf in the wild was recorded to have lived long enough to die of old age. Tellingly, survival rates for this creature are lowest during the fall and winter hunting seasons. While there are laws on the books against the willful killing of one of these animals, the red wolf’s support from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service is waning. After a request to end the Red Wolf Recovery Program by the North Carolina WildLife Resources Commission, the introductions of captive bred wolves into the wild has stopped, as well as other vital wolf protection activities, such as sterilizing local coyotes (which are invasive to N. C) to prevent inbreeding.
So why are conservation groups such as the Red Wolf Coalition working so diligently to make sure this species, that everyone seems to prefer either dead or kept captive like a museum piece in a zoo, continues to survive in the wild and indeed grow and spread its populations?
Keystone species are ones that behave as pillars of their own particular ecosystems. Their habits act in numerous ways to maintain ecological stability, or to be more of a hippie about it, the balance of nature. Without the Red Wolf, populations of roadkill-sized herbivores are left uncontrolled, meaning that the many native plants in the area are being consumed so heavily it impacts plant’s ability to prevent soil erosion, promote biodiversity, provide food for pollinators, and even sequester carbon. And in the absence of Red Wolves, small mammal’s blossoming populations can feed population growth of the problematic Coyote.
Unmanaged populations of rabbits and other herbivores especially pose a danger in our new reality of climate change. With droughts, hurricanes, and floods all made more common, more intense, and less predictable, immense and increasing stress is beginning to be placed on agriculture. Overgrown population of herbivores could easily ruin what was left of an already damaged harvest, a loss that will be keenly felt as prices rise for what little food there is and people begin going hungry.
While I was thinking, the newspaper had blown under the azalea bushes at the corner of the house. After retrieving it, I walked back towards the screen door- I would later show my aging parents the headline and ask if they had ever seen one of these animals, or known any people who eliminated them. Their experiences with the Red Wolf were all in the past, but I was terrified for the future - in our new reality of climate instability, we cannot afford to lose any creature that can serve as a stop gap between danger and disaster.
To me, the most frightening thing about the Red Wolf is its silence.