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New Year’s Resolution

Wolves are caring. Wolves are cooperative. Wolves show compassion.

Be like a wolf. 

Our New Year’s resolution: To show as much love and kindness towards others as these red wolves show one another. After all, when it comes to wolves it’s all about family.

Beyond being super sweet, these wolf’s kisses and grooming efforts are gestures of intimacy – they reaffirm the unique emotional bonds that shape the foundation of the family. For wolves, family is everything.

Red Wolves Need Our Love

While the Wolf Conservation Center has been a vocal and visible advocate in trying to protect and preserve critically endangered red wolves, the center is also active in physically safeguarding representatives of the rare species that have been entrusted to its care.

The WCC is one of 43 facilities in the U.S. participating in the Red Wolf Species Survival Plan (SSP) – a breeding and management program whose primary purpose is to support the reestablishment of red wolves in the wild through captive breeding, public education, and research.

Red wolves, native to the southeastern United States, were almost driven to extinction by intensive predator control programs and habitat loss. In 1980, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) captured the last wild red wolves (just 14 animals) and declared the species extinct in the wild.

In 1987, USFWS released the first captive red wolves in North Carolina’s Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge as part of a federal reintroduction program under the aegis of the Endangered Species Act.

Although the red wolf recovery program once served as a model for successful recovery of wolves, political barriers and consistent mismanagement by the USFWS have seriously threatened the continued existence of this highly imperiled species. In its most recent proposal announced in September of 2016, the agency called to remove most of the last wild red wolves to put them in captivity.

Beyond effectively undermining decades of wild red wolf recovery, scientists warn that USFWS’s proposal “will no doubt result in the extinction of red wolves in the wild.”

Current estimates put the wild population at the lowest level in decades, down from 130 a few years ago to just 11 known wolves today.

Red wolves could use some kindness in 2020. Join our mission to preserve and protect them. Sign up today to receive our newsletters and email updates.