The Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge is the largest intact remnant of a vast habitat that once covered more than one million acres of southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina............... Formal protection of this resource began in 1973, when the Union Camp Corporation (a local forest products company) donated 49,097acres to The Nature Conservancy................ The Nature Conservancy conveyed the donated land to the federal government, which, combined with additionally purchased land, was used to establish the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in 1974...... The refuge currently encompasses over 112,000 acres of this environmentally and biologically important area, roughly 10% of it's original size........... Coyotes and perhaps Red Wolf/ Coyote hybrids occupy this expanse and you can watch a great video below of this carnivore passing right by a black bear without incident(click on COYOTE AND/OR RED WOLF IN THE GREAT DISMAL SWAMP to view video)

Coyote and/or Red Wolf in the Great  Dismal Swamp? + Black Bear! by AvianBiologyGuy I was out birding on Hudnell Ditch, and I scanned down the road with my spotting scope.  There was a large canine loping down the road  towards me. Coyote, I thought at first. Only as  it got closer did I start wondering if it might be fully or part (hybridized) Red Wolf. What you don't see in this video clip is that I recorded him coming closer and closer before he detected me. This is only the last of the series of clips that I shot. However, it's the  best view and the most exciting. Shot with a Canon PowerShot SD780 IS point- and-shoot camera (3x zoom) hand-held up to  the eyepiece of my Kowa TSN 883 Prominar spotting scope with 30x wide-angle eyepiece.  (Effective magnification: 30-power X 3-power  = 90-power) Also, watch until the end of the clip, there's  a surprise!! Help center • Email options • Report spam ©2014 YouTube, LLC 901 Cherry Ave, San Bruno, CA 94066