Red wolves in North Carolina cannot be taken from the wild unless they pose an imminent threat to people or property and not just because someone doesn’t want a wolf nearby. This ruling by federal court today was in response to a suit brought by conservation groups against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services. The court told USFWS to stop capturing and killing—and authorizing private landowners to capture and kill—members of the rapidly dwindling population of wild red wolves on private land in the state.
Earlier this month, the USFWS announced that red wolf restoration was possible but with caveats. I wrote about this in Red wolves can repopulation North Carolina! USFWS just announced their plan. Although this plan accurately was considered seriously flawed by conservation groups, my view was that announcing restoring wild red wolf populations as scientifically possible was an important step towards ensuring their protection in the wild and provided a basis for arguing against the USFWS’s caveats. This plan allowed for protecting the previously introduced red wolf populations on two pieces of federal land, but called for removing into captivity most members of the wolf populations in a five county area of northeastern North Carolina.