RALEIGH, N.C. _ It could soon be open season on North Carolina's critically endangered red wolf population.
Under a new proposal, "there would be no prohibitions on the (taking) of red wolves on non-federal lands," the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced.
In 1973, the red wolf was added to the endangered species list.
By 1980, the species was pronounced extinct in the wild.
So, more than 30 years ago, the Fish and Wildlife Service and partner organizations began a program to reintroduce the red wolf into the wild in North Carolina. The species once peaked at 130 wolves in the wild.
But Fish and Wildlife removed rules that made hunting the wolves illegal, and so they've been shot and the population has dwindled. Local landowners said over the years the wolves depleted livestock and game animals.
Now, with only about 35 wild red wolves left in North Carolina today and another 200 in captivity nationwide, Fish and Wildlife has effectively ended its protective efforts and reintroductions, and proposes shrinking the area red wolves are allowed to exist to a few government-owned areas in Hyde and Dare counties.
The reintroduction program had some success, the federal agency said, but faced "unforeseen challenges" including hybridization of wolves with coyotes and "conflicts with humans."
The new rule would restrict the world's only wild red wolf population to one refuge and a U.S. Air Force bombing range in eastern North Carolina. The bombing range is a aerial bombing and gunnery training ground for the U.S. military
Previously, the wolves had a five-county Red Wolf Recovery Area.
If a wolf is seen outside those specific areas, it can be legally killed, under the proposed rule.
This proposal comes nearly two years after a federal court ordered Fish and Wildlife "to stop capturing and killing non-problem red wolves," in a lawsuit brought by the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) on behalf of Defenders of Wildlife, the Animal Welfare Institute and the Red Wolf Coalition, the SELC said in a news release Wednesday.
"The red wolf recovery program served as a model for reintroduction efforts and was widely celebrated as a success for 25 years before the service began ending its successful conservation actions," the SELC said.
The new proposal is based on a four-year study of the "nonessential experimental population" of red wolves under the endangered species act, according to Fish and Wildlife.
"By restricting management to Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge and the Dare County Bombing Range, we will ensure we can better reduce external threats and monitor the environments surrounding these wild wolves," said Greg Sheehan, Fish and Wildlife principal deputy director. "A recent Species Status Assessment informed us that past strategies were not effectively leading to recovery, so we believe that a concerted effort in a managed area will help."
But the SELC and other wildlife conservationists says Fish and Wildlife is shirking its responsibilities.
"The law is clear that it's the Fish and Wildlife Service's job to conserve these endangered wild red wolves, but the agency is instead driving America's red wolf to extinction in the wild," said Ramona McGee, attorney for the SELC. "We are currently asking the federal court to require the Fish and Wildlife Service to meet its legal obligation to recover this critically endangered species in relation to its actions under the existing rule.
The proposal could lead to the end of an iconic species and alpha predator now missing in the regional ecosystem that stretches as far as South Carolina, the SELC said.
"Limiting red wolves to a sliver of land suitable for only a handful of wolves, while allowing 'open season' to kill, trap or capture these highly endangered wolves on non-federal lands in the former Red Wolf Recovery Area, is an abhorrent plan to abandon the wild red wolf, not recover them as required under U.S. law," McGee said.
The SELC said the area the proposal would limit red wolves to has only supported a single pack of wolves.
In 2016, a group of 30 scientists condemned such a scenario because the limited area proposed by Fish and Wildlife could not support a viable population of red wolves and the proposal was inconsistent with the best available science, according to the SELC.
There had been more than 100 wild red wolves for more than a decade until 2015, when Fish and Wildlife suspended its reintroduction of captive-born wolves into eastern North Carolina, according to the SELC. Fish and Wildlife also stopped its coyote sterilization practice, which was meant to reduce hybridization _ one of the issues the agency cited as a challenge of the reintroduction program.
The proposal includes continuing to breed the wolves in captivity _ a struggling program _ with the intention of releasing the animals into the wild if there are legal areas available.
