RedWolfCountry by Gail McDiarmid and Marilyn McGee
even years ago, gravel country roads led sisters Gail McDiarmid and Marilyn McGee to one of North Carolina’s most unique wetland habitats, the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge. Lured by the soft, hanging Spanish moss, the women discovered bogs, marshes, hardwood swamps and pocosin wetlands. It was also there that these southern ladies first heard one of the most soulful songs of the south–the howl of a red wolf. It was the first carnivore ever to be reintroduced to the wild after being declared extinct. Grits, sweet tea and lighthouses may be synonymous with the Carolinas, but to these curiosity seekers, this part of eastern North Carolina meant learning more about the elusive and endangered red wolf.
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Kim Wheeler, Executive Director of the Red Wolf Coalition, and former Fish & Wildlife outreach coordinator Diane Hendry, took
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SL - SUMMER 2015
Marilyn and Gail into the Sandy Ridge enclosure to observe the shy, red wolf. They were in awe of this apex predator that was closely observed by scientist William Bartram in 1791. It had once roamed the southeastern United States for centuries. But, by the early 1900s, federal predator elimination programs, habitat loss and coyote interbreeding had wiped out all but a few red wolves. The tracks and scat of this elusive wolf had disappeared from the landscape and the mammal had reached the brink of extinction. Its future now rested in the hands of mankind. Little was known about the recovery process of a canid, so it was up to pioneers to lead the way. In 1967, United States Fish and Wildlife Services (USWFS) declared Canis rufus as endangered and located the last red wolves in southeastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana. Infested with parasites, over