A litter of five red wolf pups died in eastern North Carolina after their father was struck and killed by a vehicle in June, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, delivering the latest blow in the effort to reestablish one of the nation’s most endangered species in the wild.
By Brady Dennis
The births of the five pups in April — along with that of a separate litter of eight born at the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge — marked the third year in a row that at least one new litter began life in this corner of coastal North Carolina.
But that optimism has been short lived.
On June 5, the father of the litter of five pups, a red wolf known as 2444M, was killed by a vehicle on Highway 64, which runs through the heart of the refuge. The mother, known as 2413F, soon abandoned the pups, leaving officials worried they would not survive. Those fears ultimately proved true.
“Brutal” was how Joe Madison, the red wolf recovery program manager in North Carolina for the Fish and Wildlife Service, described the situation to The Washington Post this summer. “It’s maddening.”
The agency wrote in an update this week: “Pup survival is always a concern after the mortality of one of the breeding pair, particularly red wolves with their first litter, such as was the case with this pair.”
To add to the angst, the Fish and Wildlife Service said the fate of the other litter of eight pups born this year remains unclear. Its young red wolves have “not been definitively detected and identified during monitoring with remote sensing cameras, tracking and visual observation since late June,” the agency wrote.
Officials said that while no additional pup deaths have been documented, “pups approaching 5 months old are typically moving throughout the family group’s home range with the adults and being seen on remote sensing cameras.”
Fewer than 20 known red wolves remain on the landscape in eastern North Carolina — the only spot on Earth where the endangered creatures remain in the wild.
The push to save red wolves from extinction has experienced dramatic ups and downs here over the past four decades on the Albemarle Peninsula, with its massive swamp forests, farmland and marshes. Several years ago, the red wolf population that once grew to 120 here had plummeted to only seven.
Changes in federal policy and personnel, as well as legal challenges from conservation and environmental groups, have led to a recommitment to the recovery program, and the number of wolves in the wild has ticked higher in recent years.
While officials have outlined plans to strategically release some of the nearly 300 captive-bred wolves into the wild over time, the ongoing birth — and survival — of new pups in the wild is an essential element to reestablish the species across its native Southeast.
The most recent deaths underscore one of the biggest threats facing red wolves and other species: unnatural deaths at the hands of humans.
In recent years, vehicle strikes along Highway 64 and other roads have become the largest cause of mortality for red wolves, surpassing gunshots. Nearly a quarter of known adult red wolves in the wild died on area roads last year alone, fueling a push for the constructions of wildlife crossings.
“The tragic deaths of these five pups might have been prevented if we had wildlife crossings in red wolf country,” Will Harlan, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement Tuesday. “It’s shocking to see how a single vehicle collision has ripple effects across the critically endangered wild red wolf population.”
The 2021 infrastructure bill passed by Congress includes $350 million in grants for wildlife crossings, and state and federal officials have outlined plans to apply for project that would provide crossings along Highway 64.
“Right now, road mortality is the main thing holding the population back,” Ron Sutherland, chief scientist for the Wildlands Network, told The Post this summer.
An anonymous donor offered $2 million this year to help build crossings if conservation groups could raise another $2 million in matching funds.
In an email Tuesday, Sutherland said state officials recently submitted a proposal seeking $25 million in federal funds to build crossings that would benefit red wolves and other species in the region, including black bears, bobcats, spotted turtles, snakes and river otters. Advocates argue that such crossings also would help to protect the stream of drivers who routinely use the stretch to travel to and from the Outer Banks.
“This proposal was matched with pledges of at least $6.25 million in non-federal funds, at least half of which will come from private sources thanks to the work of the nonprofit conservation groups,” Sutherland wrote.
Recipients of the funding for pilot projects will probably be notified later this year or early next year, he said.
Sutherland said wildlife advocates in August also launched a roadkill monitoring survey along Highway 64 to help document the need for road crossings and to establish a scientific baseline for evaluating the future impact of any crossings that eventually get built.
During the first month of surveys, he wrote, researchers documented “over 1,300 dead vertebrate animals on U.S. 64 from Columbia, N.C. to Manns Harbor, N.C.” The tally included “close to 300 frogs, over 400 snakes, and close to 500 turtles, in addition to a dead bear, bobcat, and mink.”
Building wildlife crossings, he wrote, “would help prevent this incredible carnage and help save the red wolf from extinction in the wild, in addition to boosting public safety.”
