"Bounty offered for shooter of 2 rare red wolves in N.C.; Advocates to pay for information leading to capture" by Darryl Fears | Washington Post, November 17, 2013
WASHINGTON — Wolves have a terrible public relations problem that dates back many centuries.
In old fables, they’re constantly up to no good, stalking Little Red Riding Hood and blowing down the houses of the Three Little Pigs. Their storied reputation might explain why people are quick to put a price on their heads for killing livestock or simply showing their faces.
But recently in North Carolina, wildlife biologists flipped the script. They are offering a bounty of sorts for information leading to the capture of whoever fatally shot two rare red wolves.
That species of wolf is one of the world’s most endangered wild canids — a group that includes jackals, coyotes, and dogs. The $21,000 reward was raised by animal rights organizations after the dead wolves were found Oct. 28 and Oct. 30 on the flat plains of Washington County, on the central Carolina coast.
Accelerometers pinging in the wolves’ tracking collars informed US Fish and Wildlife Service officials that the animals’ hearts had stopped beating and led them to the carcasses. The wolves were among 66 that authorities have tracked since they were old enough to wear collars.
The animals are monitored as part of the government’s Red Wolf Recovery Program, to reestablish them in the Southeast after federally sanctioned bounties nearly wiped them out.
Today, only 90 to 100 live in the wild, and each death is a major blow to the federal government’s effort to restore red wolves in their native habitat.
Authorities said the dead wolves were of breeding age, making their demise especially upsetting — there are too few adults to produce enough litters to reestablish the species....
Red wolves were once a lot more common in the Southeast, biologists say. Their numbers were reduced by predator-control programs that put prices on the heads of native wolves as people encroached on their range. By the 1960s, they were on the brink of surviving only in zoos and museums.
The Fish and Wildlife Service listed the wolves as endangered in 1967 and frantically attempted to rebuild the population....
Once again, government's good intentions fail.
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