Theo
01-15-2007, 09:27 PM
I had a conversation with one of the wildlife managers at Land Between the Lakes last week. He told me that although there was a plan to release red wolves in LBL in the mid 1980’s, there was so much local opposition to it that it was never carried out. He had no knowledge of what I remembered about red wolves being released there about ten years earlier than that. (Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, just means that he didn’t know anything about it. He’s a young guy and might not have even been aware of such things at that time.) One of us is obviously mistaken, but I wasn’t inclined to call him a liar, especially without any documentation. Sure would be interesting if somebody researched the archives and came up with an article on a red wolf release sometime in the 1970’s.
He did mention that red wolves were released in the Smokey Mountains in the early 90’s. Apparently their survivability was very poor and reproduction was well below self-sustaining levels. They called off the project and recaptured all the wolves they could find by 1998.
There are wild red wolves currently in North Carolina, where they seem to be reproducing and repopulating successfully. There are also captive breeding red wolves being kept on an island off the coast of Mississippi, as well as breeding pairs in zoos.
There is little doubt in my mind that the coyote we have in the eastern states is a mixture of immigrant western coyotes, remnant and released red wolves, and to a lesser extent, domestic dogs that mixed in occasionally. Add to this the selective pressure from the higher survivability of those animals that are able to prey successfully on plentiful and relatively larger mammals in the east – especially the northeast, such as white-tail deer that “yard up” in areas where the snow gets deep, and the result is a larger and behaviorally different variant of what is collectively called a coyote.
Included below are a couple of links to red wolf information.
News Release on Red Wolves in Smokey Mountains – Oct. ‘98
http://www.fws.gov/southeast/news/1998/r98-091a.html
Red Wolf Recovery Project – Spring 2006
http://www.fws.gov/alligatorriver/red%20wolf/rwwildpopreport.html
He did mention that red wolves were released in the Smokey Mountains in the early 90’s. Apparently their survivability was very poor and reproduction was well below self-sustaining levels. They called off the project and recaptured all the wolves they could find by 1998.
There are wild red wolves currently in North Carolina, where they seem to be reproducing and repopulating successfully. There are also captive breeding red wolves being kept on an island off the coast of Mississippi, as well as breeding pairs in zoos.
There is little doubt in my mind that the coyote we have in the eastern states is a mixture of immigrant western coyotes, remnant and released red wolves, and to a lesser extent, domestic dogs that mixed in occasionally. Add to this the selective pressure from the higher survivability of those animals that are able to prey successfully on plentiful and relatively larger mammals in the east – especially the northeast, such as white-tail deer that “yard up” in areas where the snow gets deep, and the result is a larger and behaviorally different variant of what is collectively called a coyote.
Included below are a couple of links to red wolf information.
News Release on Red Wolves in Smokey Mountains – Oct. ‘98
http://www.fws.gov/southeast/news/1998/r98-091a.html
Red Wolf Recovery Project – Spring 2006
http://www.fws.gov/alligatorriver/red%20wolf/rwwildpopreport.html