Red Wolves North Carolina from GoHUNT

[NYSKIER]

Hey guys just read this article this morning. I'd be interested to hear your guys take on it.

https://www.gohunt.com/read/news/new-proposal-would-allow-red-wolves-to-be-hunted-outside-wildlife-refuge

 

[Lonesome_God_outdoors]

Not knowing anything other than what the article says it doesn't sound like a very good idea to me

 

[one ate E grain]

Genetic testing has kind of outpaced public wildlife agencies. I think most scientists have "evolved" on the issue of wolf species now recognizing that there is and has been a lot of mixing of wolf and yote genes. Not sure it's possible to have a hybrid endangered critter.

http://wildlife.org/supposed-wolf-species-may-actually-be-hybrids/

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/science/red-eastern-gray-wolves.html

 

[BrentD]

Pretty sad news.

 

[NYSKIER]

Genetic testing has kind of outpaced public wildlife agencies. I think most scientists have "evolved" on the issue of wolf species now recognizing that there is and has been a lot of mixing of wolf and yote genes. Not sure it's possible to have a hybrid endangered critter.

http://wildlife.org/supposed-wolf-species-may-actually-be-hybrids/

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/science/red-eastern-gray-wolves.html

Cool articles glad you brought those up defiantly an interesting topic

 

[np307]

It's a huge issue for the guys in the 5 county area affected by the wolves' presence. The battle has been going on for years, with neither side really being on the up-and-up. The farmers down there don't want the wolves at all and emotionalize the damage that they actually cause. The gov has not been supportive when actual damage has been caused, despite verbally indicating they would be. The two biggest problems right now are that 1) there's a lot of hybridization and 2) as I understand, the original re-introduction was done in that area due to the absence of coyotes. There are now a bunch of coyotes in that area and further hybridization is occurring along with the wolves not being able to compete with the coyotes.

Personally, I think the presence of coyotes in NC serves as an equivalent substitute for the absent wolves. I would love to see the coyotes gone from here and wolves recovered, but it is not going to happen. Coyotes survive too well and the wolves have too much against them.

 

[Jim/Wa]

I lost track of this issue years ago. Back around 1993 while I was going to UNC, I spent a month traveling around the state with a group of Veterinary students. The Museum of Life and Science in Durham had a small group of captive Red Wolves so we spent a morning capturing the pups with what was basically a large butterfly net and vaccinating them. There was a similar plan for the "wild" wolves on the refuge down east but live traps hadn't captured any pups. At the time, I remember thinking the adult wolves in the Durham facility were barely any bigger than the coyote I'd shot in PA back in 1989 and with very similar colorations. I'm kind of surprised the program has survived this long given the saturation of coyotes east of the Mississippi. How on earth could anyone be expected to differentiate a coyote from a red wolf in the counties surrounding the refuge?

 

[BrentD]

What I find curious about red wolves is how they existed at all, even originally. If Coyotes can displace them now, why didn't they do so a millennium ago? Coyote invasion occurred in the early 1990s in South Carolina. Why did it take so long?

 

[rlmmatt]

I had one run out in front of me in Columbia nc on a bear hunt 2 years ago. They wouldnt last long at all with the dogs used for bears running them up

 

[3855WIN]

I hunt a good bit in Louisiana. They declared the Louisiana Black Bear a different subspecies to save it a while back. They’ve recovered and been de-listed. But part of the recovery is a group of coastal bears that were transplanted from up north years ago. They are not Louisiana Black Bears, if there even is such a thing.
I’ve also read old accounts of a strain of black wolves near our hunting camp from 100 years ago. I see black coyotes over there now. Hmm.

 

[Lonesome_God_outdoors]

Check out Dan Flores book Coyote America. It's a great read. His other book American Serengeti is also excellent.

What I find curious about red wolves is how they existed at all, even originally. If Coyotes can displace them now, why didn't they do so a millennium ago? Coyote invasion occurred in the early 1990s in South Carolina. Why did it take so long?

 

[BrentD]

Coincidentally, this crossed my path a few minutes ago. It is an interesting summary of a new paper on exactly this topic, coyote expansion across North and Central America. If nothing else, it has a really cool map of the process.
https://naturalsciences.org/calendar/news/how-coyotes-conquered-the-continent/

A link to the original paper is here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MMHTMNl-iXVYdofbWmnKNW10fR5SV5hk/view

There are other stories of North American canids that had more commensal or mutualistic relations with humans in North America. The Carolina Dog being the one I know most about (which is not much). The coyote, however, is a pretty new critter on the scene east of the Mississippi. My grad student and I like to think we saw the first one in South Carolina in 1991 or 2, I forget which, near New Ellenton on the Bomb Plant.

 

[scubohuntr]

What I find curious about red wolves is how they existed at all, even originally. If Coyotes can displace them now, why didn't they do so a millennium ago? Coyote invasion occurred in the early 1990s in South Carolina. Why did it take so long?

Coyotes are edge critters. As long as the tallgrass prairie and the "big woods" were intact across central North America, wolves had an advantage and coyotes were limited to the West. Once the loggers and farmers had destroyed most of the wilderness, as well as most of the wolves, coyotes (as well as whitetailed deer, turkeys, and cottontails) were free to spread. Wolves don't do well in subdivisions, but coyotes are quite happy there. As the West was settled, habitat kept getting worse for wolves and better for coyotes.

 

[JTHOMP]

I hunt a good bit in Louisiana. They declared the Louisiana Black Bear a different subspecies to save it a while back. They’ve recovered and been de-listed. But part of the recovery is a group of coastal bears that were transplanted from up north years ago. They are not Louisiana Black Bears, if there even is such a thing.
I’ve also read old accounts of a strain of black wolves near our hunting camp from 100 years ago. I see black coyotes over there now. Hmm.

The bears in the Tensas and Coastal populations are true Louisiana Black Bears. The Point Coupee population was started from a mix of a few remaining native bears and bears from up north (Minnesota or Michigan I think). Those bears were brought in during the same era that wildlife agencies were reintroducing animals all over the country. No different than the "Wisconsin blue deer", marsh deer from Southeast LA, or deer from the Red Dirt preserve that were captured and reintroduced to different parts of the state. All are whitetails, but each a different subspecies.

The Coastal population for the most part is isolated from the other populations because of roads and inbreeding is occurring. Because of this there is little effort for managing it aside from nuisance bears.

 

[JTHOMP]

Coyotes are edge critters. As long as the tallgrass prairie and the "big woods" were intact across central North America, wolves had an advantage and coyotes were limited to the West. Once the loggers and farmers had destroyed most of the wilderness, as well as most of the wolves, coyotes (as well as whitetailed deer, turkeys, and cottontails) were free to spread. Wolves don't do well in subdivisions, but coyotes are quite happy there. As the West was settled, habitat kept getting worse for wolves and better for coyotes.

Makes sense. It's also worth noting that when they were trapping the remaining red wolves they came out of SW Louisiana and SE Texas. Those areas are mostly coastal prairie with edge habitat from farms, which would be easy access for coyotes to breed with.
I have not seen any writings or research on it, but from what I've heard of the when they were trapping red wolves was that they were also killing coyotes and hybrids. It was later determined that a lot of the hybrids were actually red wolves and the ones kept for the captive population were hybrids.

 

[EdP]

The red wolf reintroduction effort has been a massive failure and waste of resources for a variety of reasons. Now there are large numbers of coyotes in the same habitat and the two are essentially indistinguishable without DNA testing. This creates a huge problem for hunters and trappers when killing the red wolf is prohibited but killing coyotes is allowed. Establishing a geographic boundary line is a simple and elegant solution. If the red wolf can survive in competition with the coyote it will. If it can't survive the competition it is doomed anyway and there is nothing to be gained by trying to enforce prohibitions against killing them.