{"id":6540,"date":"2000-12-01T14:51:00","date_gmt":"2000-12-01T19:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ncseagrant.ncsu.edu\/coastwatch\/?page_id=6540"},"modified":"2024-06-24T22:15:44","modified_gmt":"2024-06-25T02:15:44","slug":"naturalists-notebook-coyote-influx-threatens-red-wolf-survival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ncseagrant.ncsu.edu\/coastwatch\/naturalists-notebook-coyote-influx-threatens-red-wolf-survival\/","title":{"rendered":"NATURALIST’S NOTEBOOK: Coyote Influx Threatens Red Wolf Survival"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n
Coyotes. In popular conscious\u00adness, 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 \u2014 and biologists with the federal red wolf re\u00adestablishment program are the ones who are howling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Though red wolves and coyotes are different species, they are both canids, and all canids \u2014 wolves, foxes, dogs \u2014 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.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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, Canis rufus<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n