RED WOLVES AGAIN PROWL TENNESSEE HILLS by Sean Kelly, Special to 
the Washington Post (2/13/92)

    Roamng the forest of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is 
a pack of red wolves, members of a species that until recently was 
aparently extinct in the wild.
    The pack --- two zoo-bred adults and their two 7-month-old female 
pups -- were released in November, making Tennessee the second state 
to host the latest experiment in restoring the country's wildlife.
    An experimental population of four pairs of red wollves was 
successfully reintroduced into North Carolina's Alligator River 
National Wildlife Reguge in 1987.
    "The first year here in the Smokies is purely experimental," 
said Chris Lucash, a wildlife biologist for the U.S. Fish and 
Wildlife Service. "We are not stocking the mountains with wolves. 
There's going to be no reproduction this year."
    The Smoky wolves are wearing radio collars that will allow them 
to be monitored closely for about a year.
    Then they will be recaptured for extensive testing. Data 
will also be collected on the animals' home range, diet, interation 
with coyotes and humans, and whether or not the wolves a threat to 
livestock.
    "We'll look at all the information...then we'll talk about a 
full-fledged release program," he said.
    Known to have existed throughout the southeast, from Pennsylvaia to 
Texas, red wolves were extirpated for Tennessee in 1905. Twenty 
years ago,less than 100 red wolves remained in the wild, living in a 
relatively small area of coastal Texas and Lousiana.
   With the population dwindling and extinction imminent, FWS captured 
40 of the remaining red wolves in 1975 and placed them in a captive 
breeding program at Point Defiance Zoological Park in Tacoma, Wash., 
where mated pairs produced their first litters in 1977.
    The wolves left in the wild are thought to have died out.
    While the red wolf has been listed as endangered species since 
1973, opponents of red wolf recovery plan inthe Smokies claim 
the animal that is being reintroduced is not a true species but a 
wolf-coyote hybrid, and therefore does not qualify for 
protection under the Endangered Species Act.
    A study conduct for FWS showed that tody's red wolf carries 
genetic material like that found in coyotes and in gray wolves.
    If red wolves were the product of random mating among 
gray wolves, coyotes and other red wolves, geneticists would expect 
to see a fairly smooth graduation of traits in the existing 
populations.
    FWS scientists say they saw no gradation. When two red wolves 
breed, their offspring carry the same distinct traits 0-0 size, 
teeth, skulls.
    "This research needs to be put into perspective," said Alligator 
River National Wildlife Refuge wolf co-ordinator Garny Henry. "while 
the findings may be telling us thered wolf is hybrid, they 
equally support two other conclusions. One, it's possible that unique 
genes exist but were missed in this study. And, two, red wolves may 
be a distinct subspecies of gray wolf that lacks distinctive genetic 
material."
    An adult red wolf is larger than a coyote, weighing between 40 
and 80 pounds. Its coat is gray and blac with a redish cast sometimes 
described as cinnamon. Unlike th graywolf, the forest-dwelling red 
wolf is shy an does not hunt in packs. It feeds mostly on rodents, 
rabbits, racoons, ground-nesting birds, plants and insects, and 
in some cases small deer. As with theg gray wolf,there is no record 
of red-wolf attacks on man.
    One successful method biologists have implemented to ensure that 
red wolves will not interbreed with coyotes in wild surroundings is to 
isolate breeding pairs on coastal islands in South Carolina, 
Mississippi, and Florida. Once a pair has produced pups, the young 
ones are usually recaptureed and taken to a holding facility at the 
Alligator River refuge.
    "One of the reasons fro the hybridizationin the past was that 
the social structure of the red wolf was pretty weak," Lucase said. 
"A lot of animals were singles. They couldn't find animals of their 
own kind to mate with, and they chose the next available thing that
that was a coyote.'
    Red-wolf fossils found in the Smokies date back 750,000 years, 
predating the oldest remains of gray wolves and long preceding the 
50-year-old eastward migration of coyotes. But reintroduction to the 
park where ancestors roamed will also place the red wolf in close 
proximity to radio-tracked coyotes.
    "We're hoping that if we maintain mated pairs, that the social 
bond will be strong enough that thfey will not choose to interact at 
all with coyotes except mainly to push them out," Lucash said.

