The Secret World of Red Wolves: The Fight To Save North America's Other Wolf

Proclaiming a love of all things local is currently a fast and easy way to brand yourself as hip and cool. But one of the truly "local" wonders of the United States, the red wolf (Canis rufus) is almost completely unknown by even the most hip animal lovers and environmentalists. Less documented in the press than the gray wolf and essentially hidden from sight, the red wolf is a species native to the Southeastern U.S. coast; it almost ended up on the extinction list thanks to early settlers who hunted it relentlessly. By the 1980s it was declared functionally extinct. Now nature and science writer Beeland expertly and succinctly covers the story of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's efforts to find and rescue the few remaining wolves in Texas and Louisiana. After locating (and trapping) only 17 of them, the service created the first-ever U.S. captive breeding program in an attempt to bring back the red wolf; there are now almost 200 of them.