Feds investigate killings of endangered N.C. red wolves

For the second time in six months, federal authorities are investigating the suspected shooting death of a red wolf, a species that once teetered on the brink of extinction and now wages its fight for survival exclusively in eastern North Carolina's wilderness.

The most recent killing of a red wolf - a creature rarer than the panda - occurred last week in the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in Dare County. Two red wolves were found dead in nearby Hyde County six months ago.

The wolves are being killed at a rate that alarms federal officials and wildlife conservationists.

Since 1987, 66 have died as the result of gunshots, with more than half the deaths occurring in the past six years, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. That number does not include suspected gunshot deaths, including the three most recent ones.

Today, biologists estimate that between 115 and 130 red wolves exist in the wild - all of them in a five-county area on the Albemarle Peninsula of North Carolina.

The Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees a red-wolf recovery program, is investigating the latest deaths. Anyone convicted of killing a red wolf - protected under the federal Endangered Species Act - faces up to a year in prison and $100,000 in fines.

Armed humans are the biggest threat to the survival of the species, said David Rabon, who directs the federal recovery program.

"We're down to managing and struggling to maintain or get as many on the landscape as we can," Rabon said. The shootings, he said, have " certainly arrested" the wolves' population growth.

Once a top predator in the Southeast, red wolves were nearly lost to history when development and hunting decimated their numbers. They were declared extinct in the wild in 1980.

Red wolves survive today partly because of the recovery program, which bred the animals in captivity and re-introduced the species in the wild beginning in 1987. About 170 are in captivity in zoos across the country, including three males that live at the Virginia Living Museum in Newport News.

Nine years ago, biologists identified the biggest threat to the survival of the wild red-wolf population as hybridization, or cross-breeding, with coyotes that moved into the area. They worried that cross-breeding would eventually eliminate the red wolf as its own distinct species.

Management practices have successfully mitigated that threat, Rabon said.

Since 2004, the biggest challenge has been to minimize the number of red wolves lost to gunshots.

Of the 37 red wolves shot since 2004, 31 have been breeders - meaning they were the male or female leader of a pack mostly composed of offspring that have yet to disperse and start their own packs.

Today, the number of wild breeding pairs is down to 13. Breeding pairs peaked at 20 only a few years ago, Rabon said.

Rabon said he believes many of the deaths come down to a simple misunderstanding. Hunters, he suspects, are mistaking the wolves for coyotes - an animal legal to shoot at any time of the year.

Unfortunately, Rabon said, there also may be people who are simply intolerant of an animal with a historically bad reputation.

"The problem typically comes in where humans, people, have a misunderstanding, a perception, of this big, bad wolf - this beast or something," Rabon said.

On the contrary, red wolves are not aggressive toward humans, said George Mathews, curatorial director at the Virginia Living Museum.

"They shy away from people more than anything else," he said, adding that the gunshot epidemic "might just be a lack of education."

"I think some of these folks just might feel threatened," Mathews said.

Ignorance of the red wolves' protected status also is a problem, said Kim Wheeler, director of the nonprofit Red Wolf Coalition.

"We have people that come into the area that don't even know we have wolves," Wheeler said.

Wheeler said she worries for the population's safety when hunting season rolls around late in the year, though she understands that accidents happen. People who oppose wildlife management policies should use their voices, not their guns, to express their feelings, Wheeler said.

"One (death) is too many," she said.

Erin James, (252) 441-1711, erin.james@pilotonline.com