Rule to Allow Hunting Could Doom Rare Red Wolves
Wildlife experts aren’t keen on a plan by the government to allow private landowners to shoot wolves living on their land.
The red wolf, which once roamed all the way from Texas to New York, has dwindled to a wild population of around 35, found only in one peninsula in eastern North Carolina. On Wednesday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed allowing landowners to legally kill those wolves once they leave the confines of a small protected area known as Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge.
The proposal was panned by wildlife experts. The agency has “all but pulled the plug on the species,” says Michael Chamberlain, a biologist at the University of Georgia who has studied the animals for more than a decade. (Related: “For World's Only Wild Red Wolves, a Fateful Decision.”)
Hundreds of years of trapping and
