There are only 20 of them left in the wild and they all live in one wildlife refuge in the U.S.
Meet the red wolf.
Meet the red wolf.
Category
🐳
AnimalsTranscript
00:00This is our wolf. It was solely native to the United States.
00:17This is a species that's on the brink of extinction.
00:20It's the most endangered wolf in the world.
00:39They have longer legs and longer, leaner bodies, but they don't weigh near as much.
00:45They also live in family groups as opposed to packs.
00:49So there's one male and one female and up to two years of offspring.
00:53They are just like your puppies at home.
00:55You've got the goofballs and you've got the serious pups and you've got the ones that
00:59try and help mom and dad lead and just seeing those personalities develop over time is very
01:04unique and very special.
01:18Lo and behold, our government even put bounties on these animals and they were almost hunted
01:23to extinction.
01:36They brought those wolves into managed care, into zoological institutions across the United
01:40States and started the first ever breeding program to help bring the numbers for the
01:46population back up so that they could eventually release them back into the wild.
01:51We know now that all the animals that are alive today, both under human care and in
01:55the wild, are descendants of those 14 animals.
02:03Here in the southeast portion of the United States, it is pretty heavily densely populated
02:19with people.
02:20They do run into people and roads quite a bit more frequently than the gray wolf would.
02:25Landowners are afraid that a wolf being reintroduced and brought back to an area is going to hurt
02:29their livelihood, whether it's they hurt their livestock or they make it harder to farm on
02:35their property.
02:36And I can tell you, the different wolf species I worked with all share one trait.
02:40They are scared to death of people.
02:42They want nothing to do with them.
03:04Myself and one of our keepers actually got to fly with our wolves to North Carolina,
03:09make sure they stayed safe the whole flight.
03:10The two animals that we brought down actually were put into two different packs and got
03:15to meet two new mates.
03:18And so they got to bond with their mate before they were released into the wild.
03:21I may have cried a few times along the way of just, you know, excitement and pride that
03:27this is happening.
03:29I know that we will be able to hear the song of the red wolf for generations to come.