Red wolf

The red wolf (Canis lupus rufus[6][7] or Canis rufus[4]) is a canine native to the southeastern United States. The subspecies is the product of ancient genetic admixture between the gray wolf and the coyote,[8][9] however it is regarded as unique and therefore worthy of conservation.[10] Morphologically it is intermediate between the coyote and gray wolf, and is of a reddish, tawny color.[11][12] The US Endangered Species Act of 1973 currently does not provide protection for endangered admixed individuals and researchers argue that these should warrant full protection under the Act.[8][10] However, the red wolf when considered as a species is listed as an endangered species under this Act and is protected by law.[13] Although Canis rufus is not listed in the CITES Appendices of endangered species,[2] since 1996 the IUCN has listed it as a critically endangered species.[2]

Red wolves were originally distributed throughout the eastern United States from the Atlantic Ocean to central Texas, and in the north from the Ohio River Valley, northern Pennsylvania and southern New York south to the Gulf of Mexico.[14] The red wolf was nearly driven to extinction by the mid-1900s due to aggressive predator-control programs, habitat destruction, and extensive hybridization with coyotes. By the late 1960s, it occurred in small numbers in the Gulf Coast of western Louisiana and eastern Texas. Fourteen of these survivors were selected to be the founders of a captive-bred population, which was established in the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium between 1974 and 1980. After a successful experimental relocation to Bulls Island off the coast of South Carolina in 1978, the red wolf was declared extinct in the wild in 1980 to proceed with restoration efforts. In 1987, the captive animals were released into the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge on the Albemarle Peninsula in North Carolina, with a second release, since reversed, taking place two years later in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.[15] Of 63 red wolves released from 1987–1994,[16] the population rose to as many as 100–120 individuals in 2012, but has declined to 40 individuals in 2018.[17]

The red wolf's taxonomic status is the subject of ongoing debate.[14] In 1851 the naturalists John James Audubon and John Bachman recognized Canis lupus rufus in the southern and southeastern United States.[3] In 1937 the zoologist Edward Alphonso Goldman proposed this wolf to be a new species Canis rufus.[4] In 1967, the zoologists Barbara Lawrence and William H. Bossert rebutted Goldman's classification as being too heavily based on probable hybrid specimens.[18] In the third edition of Mammal Species of the World published in 2005, the mammalogist W. Christopher Wozencraft listed the red wolf as a hybrid of the gray wolf and the coyote, but due to its uncertain status compromised by recognizing it as a subspecies of the grey wolf Canis lupus rufus.[7] Since the early 1980s, genetic analysis has been used to debate whether the red wolf is a species or a wolf/coyote hybrid. Commencing in 2016, two studies using whole genome sequencing indicate that North American gray wolves and wolf-like canids were the result of ancient and complex gray wolf and coyote mixing,[8][9] with the red wolf possessing 60% coyote ancestry and 40% wolf ancestry.[9]