Land Between the Lakes is raising an endangered red wolf cub in partnership with the Red Wolf Recovery Program. The six-week-old female pup comes after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service selected LBL and five other sites out of forty other finalists for the project.
John Pollpeter is the lead naturalist at LBL's Woodlands Nature Station. He says these wolves once dominated the southern ecosystem, but excessive hunting and habitat destruction crippled the population.
“Currently in the south there's only one or two locations that you'll find red wolves. There's a small island in Florida and then there is a peninsula in northeastern North Carolina that you can find about 100 red wolves in the wild,” said Pollpeter
Pollpeter says the region's coyote population is preventing reintroduction efforts. Red wolves and coyotes compete for resources while also interbreeding, further diluting the gene pool.