Field Guide: Red wolf

The wolf of the South came back from the brink—only to be decimated again. Is it time to rethink what a wolf even is?

A photo of a running red wolf by Curtis Carley, the scientist who designed the initial recovery program / U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

Wolves once freely roamed not just across the mountain west, but throughout all of North America. The Southeast had its own particular species: the red wolf, which, after centuries of slaughter, was listed as endangered in the 1970s. By then, the red wolf survived in one narrow sliver of habitat: the forests and swamps at the edges of Louisana and Texas.

The obvious approach to saving this species—simply protecting this last remaining population—was already doomed to fail. The numbers were too low. Plus, coyotes had recently invaded the region; by interbreeding with wolves, they tainting the bloodline. So the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service tried a bold approach: for its own protection, the red wolf was removed from the wild.

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