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Wildlife agency extends red wolf comment period
The Virginian-Pilot
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The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has extended by two weeks the comment period on the red wolf recovery program.
The agency is in the midst of a 60-day review of the effort to save wild red wolves in five northeastern North Carolina counties. Both sides of the issue are passionate.
"As a result of the high interest in this work, the email server for this address is struggling to keep up," said Leopoldo Miranda, the agency's assistant regional director for ecological services in Atlanta, in a statement.
Comments can be posted by Sept. 26 atredwolfreview@fws.gov. They also can be sent by mail by Sept. 26 to Red Wolf Evaluation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 1875 Century Boulevard, Suite 200, Atlanta, Georgia, 30345.
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3 comments:
I'd be curious to know if anyone has found (through genetic testing) residual red wolf genes in southeastern coyotes that are not expressed in the red wolf population held in North Carolina. That is, have coyotes been found with alleles that are not present in western coyotes nor current red wolf populations nor domesticaed dogs. Just curious.
Mark............contact biologists Jon Way in Massachusetts..........He likely can provide insight......jw9802@yahoo.com.............perhaps also Stan Gehrt in Chicago....gehrt.1@osu.edu............John Benson of Trent U............johnbenson@trent.ca............Linda Rutledge also of Trent.....lrutledge@nrdpfc.ca............please mention my name when writing to them and thanks
I work at the N. C. Zoo, where we captive breed Red Wolves, and some pups born here have been successfully placed in wild Red Wolf dens to be adopted and raised wild--both a population boost and genetic diversity boost for the 100 to 150 wild Red Wolves on the coast in N. C. We JUST had one of the programs representatives come and give a lecture at our zoo, updating us on how things are going(GREAT program! I hope it continues--there is an effort afoot to end it, alas!)). I actually asked if anyone in her program knew of any "coywolf" genes in N. C.--they HAVE been documented as far south as Virginia so far. She didn't have any current knowledge on that, but there IS going to be an URBAN COYOTE study in Charlotte, N. C. starting up, and no doubt they'll be doing genetic tests. I'll be VERY surprised if various different elements of the "canis soup" don't turn up! I personally saw a local news segment a few years back where someone got film of a wild canid alongside a highway near Raleigh, N. C. To me, it did NOT look like your typical coyote--the muzzle was much heavier(1st thing I noticed), and it looked to me to be at least part Red Wolf(and regularly observing some of this "old bloodline" of "pure" Red Wolves here at the N. C. Zoo, I'm purty familiar with the differences). No doubt lots of crossbreeding has gone on--an effort is made to try and control this(a WASTE, in my opinion! I'd personally take those crossbred pups and disperse them elsewhere, to get AS MUCH of that old Red Wolf genetic influence around as possible!), but no way can they get to 100% of the crosses, who then no doubt disperse widely upon maturity. Same thing happened up in the Smoky Mountain National Park back in the 1990's--though "officially" canceled(due to various problems, INCLUDING Red Wolves crossbreeding regularly with the local populous coyotes!), and "officially" reported to have retrieved all the "pure" Red Wolves, MANY hybrids remained and have continued to influence the coyote population there, as well! So that's at BOTH ENDS of the state of N. C., AND eastern Tennessee, AND these guys can disperse for many miles, so whether officialdom wants to acknowledge it, I personally believe there ARE quite a few wild coy-wolf types out there with some of the old bloodline Red Wolf influence! But remember, that's NOT official(yet...) And I say, power to them! The return of the NEW "Red Wolves"!!!.....L.B.
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