Red wolf

Appearance

It is generally intermediate in size between the coyote and gray wolf, though some specimens may overlap in size with small gray wolves. Its pelage is typically more reddish and sparsely furred than the coyote's and gray wolf's, though melanistic individuals do occur. Its fur is generally tawny to grayish in color, with light markings around the lips and eyes.

Adults measure 136–165 centimetres (54–65 inches) in length, among them the tail, that is about 37 cm (15 in) long. Their weight ranges from 20 to 39 kilograms (44 to 86 pounds), with males averaging 29 kg (64 lb) and females 25 kg (55 lb).

Range and habitat

The red wolf's range covers the southeastern US to the south Atlantic and Gulf coasts, extending as far north to the Ohio River Valley and central Pennsylvania, and as far west as southeastern Missouri and Central Texas. In 2002, Nowak published paleontological research expanding their historical range to land south of the Saint Lawrence River in Canada, along much of the East Coast, and west to Missouri and mid-Illinois, terminating in southern Central Texas. Given their wide historical distribution, red wolves probably used a large suite of habitat types at one time.

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 so that restoration efforts could proceed. The red wolf recovery program is unique for a large carnivore reintroduction in that more than half of the land used for reintroduction lies on private property.

GBIF currently lists 929 occurrence points. Those points follow where people logged the taxon — museum drawers and surveys included — not a closed range boundary.

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

Diet and breeding

Prior to its extinction in the wild, the red wolf's diet consisted of rabbits, rodents, and nutria (an introduced species). White-tailed deer were largely absent from the last wild refuge of red wolves on the Gulf Coast between Texas and Louisiana (where specimens were trapped from the last wild population for captive breeding), that likely accounts for the discrepancy in their dietary habits listed here.

After the 1973 passage of the Endangered Species Act, under that the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) recognizes the red wolf as an endangered species and grants it protected status, a captive-breeding program was established at the Point Defiance Zoological Gardens in Tacoma, Washington. Of the 400 canids captured, only 43 were believed to be red wolves and sent to the breeding facility. Of the original 43 animals, only 17 were considered pure red wolves and since three were unable to breed, 14 became the breeding stock for the captive-breeding program.

In crisis

Fish and Wildlife Service recognized it as endangered and in 1996 the International Union for Conservation of Nature listed it as critically endangered. 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. In 1962 a study of skull morphology of wild Canis in the states of Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas indicated that the red wolf existed in only a few populations due to hybridization with the coyote.

Of 63 red wolves released from 1987 to 1994, 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, about 14 in 2019 and 8 as of October 2021. A male wolf pup from a captive litter was fostered into the pack, and with this new addition, the family of red wolves, that was named the Milltail pack by FWS, has grown to 13 wild individuals.

Red wolf is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.

Sources

Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Red wolf, Wikidata item Q28196316 and GBIF occurrence geography. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.