Rare wolves coming to Homosassa Springs

It'll be the only state park with red wolves, once extinct in the wild.

By BARBARA BEHRENDT, Times Staff Writer
Published December 28, 2007

The red wolf is a cinnamonlike color and smaller than its well-known cousin, the grey wolf.
	[U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service]

ADVERTISEMENT [Times (1995)] An effort to reintroduce red wolves to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee failed.

HOMOSASSA SPRINGS - A stroll down the Wildlife Walk of Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park these days nets a visitor a close-up view of a batch of gobbling turkeys. Soon, that space will hold something much more rare.

Homosassa Springs has been approved to house five red wolves, creatures so scarce that just a couple of decades ago, they were extinct in the wild. It will be the only state park boasting this rarest of Florida fauna.

The wolves will join other endangered and protected species on display at Homosassa Springs - manatees, whooping cranes, key deer and the American crocodile.

Park manager Art Yerian and Susan Lowe, who heads up animal care, recently showed their new red wolf enclosure. A grassy, open-air pen at the very front of the Wildlife Walk has been reserved for the special canines.

The exhibit is near new enclosures for owls, small birds of prey and the park's foxes.

Yerian is waiting for a check just after the first of the year that will allow the park to complete the wolf exhibit by adding night houses. Once that construction is done, all will be set for the arrival of the wolves this spring.

No details are yet available about the specific animals that will come to the park, but it is not likely that the first animals will be a breeding pair. Instead, they might be adult same-sex siblings, according to Will Waddell, the national red wolf species survival plan coordinator.

While eventually the plan is to allow Homosassa Springs to become part of the captive breeding program, Waddell said he wants the staff to start slowly.

He sees the addition of the rare species as a good opportunity to tell visitors about the plight of red wolves, especially since many people don't know that they once called Florida home.

Not actually red like red foxes, red wolves are a ruddy, cinnamon-like color. They are smaller than their well-known cousins, the grey wolves. They tend to hunt in smaller packs for smaller game than the bigger wolf species. Red wolves were thought to have ranged from Florida to possibly New England to the north and Texas to the west in the distant past.

A species in trouble

Realizing that the animals were in trouble, in 1970, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service started a captive breeding program. There are about 200 animals in that program now.

By 1980, red wolves had disappeared from the wild. But with a reintroduction program in place, there are now between 100 to 130 wolves in the wild.

Most are living in North Carolina, but a breeding pair and its pup live on St. Vincent, an island off the Florida Panhandle. That pup, which was raised isolated and wild, will eventually join wild wolves in North Carolina, Waddell said.

Eventually, another location in the wolves' original range will be chosen as well to repopulate with red wolves, but just where is a decision that will take time. An effort to reintroduce the animals to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee failed.

The red wolf recovery program is unique in that it is the only case in which a large predator has been successfully reintroduced into the wild after being declared extinct in the wild.

Waddell, who is based at the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium in Tacoma, Wash., said public education that is made possible through exhibits such as the one planned at Homosassa Springs goes a long way to helping the red wolves.

Their decline had been like that of so many other creatures. Their habitat was lost to development, and they were persecuted, as most large predators are.

"The mentality has been to get rid of them," he said. "But the red wolf has dodged a bullet with the help of a lot of good people."

Barbara Behrendt can be reached at behrendt@sptimes.com or 352 848-1434.

[Last modified December 27, 2007, 21:04:51]