EnrichBits: A monthly look at animal enrichment Our red wolves, who are shy by nature, don’t tend to be real playful in front of large, loud groups. If you catch them one on one, towards the earlier part of the morning, you can see them moving around. Here, Keeper Katy caught them really moving. Their exhibit, designed with a lot of hilly topography and natural elements, challenges them as a wild landscape would, and is long enough side to sideRead more
Posts tagged: #red wolf
Red Wolf Pup Photos
No, no pups at the Museum, although whelping season isn’t over and we are still waiting hopefully. We’ve got about another month to see if our wolves will deliver some little ones. The photos are from red wolves that were born at a holding facility in Manteo on the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge. These four pups (3 males and 1 female. In the “zoo” world this would be written 3.1) are living “next door” to our brother wolves thatRead more
The hazards of coyote night lighting
There are many struggles that face the wild red wolf population at the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge (ARNWR). I have already mentioned gunshot mortality and domestic dog diseases as two of the main problems that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) must address on a regular basis. However, another pressing issue is the importation of coyotes for the practice of coyote hunting, which can threaten the red wolf population in more ways than one. One of the initialRead more
Spotlight: Will Waddell
This is Will Waddell. Will is an important person to me (and others too) because he is a big-guy in the world of red wolves. Will is based in Tacoma, Washington at the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium. He is the Red Wolf SSP Coordinator. Species Survival Plans (SSPs) are programs that take a particular species in peril (typically animals endangered or threatend in the wild) and manage the entire population as one group. Breeding and conservation tend to beRead more
The threat of dog diseases on red wolves
In my previous post about red wolves, I discussed how the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has been helping red wolves to reclaim former territories that were taken over by coyotes years ago. Even with the success that the USFWS has had in re-establishing red wolves in the wild, there are other factors that still threaten the population’s stability. As I mentioned in an earlier post, gunshot mortality is the biggest threat to red wolves. But another factor thatRead more
The scoop on Red Wolf poop
Keeper Katy and I recently attended a talk at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences titled “The History and Future of the Red Wolf (Canis rufus) in North Carolina.” It was given by Justin Bohling from the University of Idaho, who is a graduate student in Lisette Wait’s lab. Besides giving a good background on the history of the Red Wolf Recovery Project administered by the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), he presented his application of some new genetic techniquesRead more