The red wolf is built between its cousins: bigger than a coyote, leaner than a gray wolf, with a reddish tinge behind the ears and down the legs.Source 1
It was once the top predator of the American Southeast, from the Gulf Coast to the Ohio Valley.Source 2
By the 1970s it was nearly gone, and biologists made the hardest call: catch every last one.Source 2
Fourteen of the seventeen captured wolves became founders. Every red wolf alive descends from them.Source 1
In 1987, wolves returned to Alligator River, North Carolina — among the first times an extinct-in-the-wild species was rebuilt from captivity.Source 3
The population climbed past 130, then collapsed to eight by 2021 — gunshots, vehicles, and coyote hybridization taking wolves faster than they were born.Source 1Source 2
The rebuilding is intimate: biologists slip captive-born pups, days old, into wild dens, and wild mothers raise them as their own.Source 4Source 5
As of January 2025, seventeen wild red wolves are known — each wearing an orange collar so drivers and hunters know them.Source 6
Behind them stands a captive population of about 250, breeding in zoos across the country.Source 1
To witness the red wolf is to keep faith with one of the world's most endangered wild canids, one den at a time.Source 1
