Cool

Yep. Sad they were eradicated the way they were.

Red wolf genetics in Galveston coyotes too. Very cool...

Gunny456 said:

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Yea. Let's spend it on housing and feeding illegals and paying off student debts to irresponsible people. Frankly I'd rather see it spent on our wildlife than what it's typically waisted on…. I mean if it's going to be waisted.

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Yes, lets don't waist it on people

I hope they get the wild population sorted out. Seems like every update I read about the ones in NC is that they are on the brink of collapse. The certainly don't seem like very prolific breeders compared to their competitors. If you put 20 coyote on an island the damn thing would be over run in a few years

This is cool!

Waist = acronym for government bloat?

There ain't a measuring tape long enough to measure our govt waste..........

328M is steep, but I can see some value in restoring a population that mankind nearly eradicated. Now the TPWD rainbow trout stocking program? That's a big waste to me. Raising non native, cold water fish then dumping them to waiting cormorants.

Ayto Siks said:

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328M is steep, but I can see some value in restoring a population that mankind nearly eradicated. Now the TPWD rainbow trout stocking program? That's a big waste to me. Raising non native, cold water fish then dumping them to waiting cormorants.

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You misspelled "water turkey".

Keystone species? Even the biologists can't agree on wether it is a mini wolf or a super coyote. At best it is a subspecies.

I thought that red wolves were actually a hybrid between other wolves and coyotes. Not true?

Keystone in its environment. Coyotes weren't native to the east coast historically and only came when we wiped out the other large species, red wolves filled much of the role they now play.
As far as its status as a species, last I saw it was considered unique. Though there have been interbreeding problems in NC. Maybe there's more updated info I don't know of though.

https://www.nationalacademies.org/news/2019/03/current-evidence-supports-classification-of-red-wolf-as-a-distinct-species-report-says-mexican-gray-wolf-is-a-valid-subspecies-of-gray-wolf

Interesting. Good post. Thanks.

I'm not sure you know what a keystone species is. If an organism's function in an ecosystem can be filled by a different organism with minimal impact on the function of the ecosystem it isn't a keystone species. Sounds like the east coast ecosystem is fine with coyotes taking the role of the red wolf. Unless you have information about drastic changes due to the absence of the red wolf?

Ayto Siks said:

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328M is steep, but I can see some value in restoring a population that mankind nearly eradicated. Now the TPWD rainbow trout stocking program? That's a big waste to me. Raising non native, cold water fish then dumping them to waiting cormorants.

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TPWD doesn't raise rainbow trout.

Jabin said:

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Interesting and thanks.

From my own experiences, the classification of critters as distinct species, and whether they are endangered or not, can be very political rather than scientific. It would be very interesting to know the politics behind the classification of the red wolf.

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yes -agree. I read a TPWD article about them a few years back and this is one of those hotly contested taxonomic question that rage within those disciplines with believers in both sides. The fact that they so easily interbreed leads me to believe that this is more of natural process than a full extinction of a species as a result of man made habitat changes. I guess you could argue the habitat changes made that have favored the more adaptable coyote are part of the near extinction of the pure species ( if it truly is a pure strain)

Saw this last year. And to be fair, I said "much" of their role, but not nearly all. Given that there are coyotes in this area, this would seem unique to them.

Quote:

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A new study published in Animal Conservation has revealed that the recent dramatic decline of endangered red wolves in North Carolina coincided with significant increases in multiple prey and competitor species on lands within the red wolf recovery area. The findings support that this rare wolf species had been exerting important ecological impacts before its rapid decline due to poaching in recent years. While the influential role of gray wolves is now widely appreciated after studies showed remarkable changes in the ecology of Yellowstone National Park after gray wolves were returned, until now, no similar research has been conducted on the critically imperiled red wolf.


The results showed that after the red wolf population crashed from poaching, populations of prey species like white-tailed deer and wild turkey held steady, but mesopredators, including raccoons, opossums, bobcats and bears, showed large increases. For example, the raccoon detection rate doubled from 2018 to 2021 as wolf numbers declined.

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https://www.wildlandsnetwork.org/news/ehl5xkstkzky6njucs67304756sbb5

But this isn't really the board for arguing, I will just say for me it's worth the money, when we purposely break something in nature we should fix it, regardless of exactly how you choose to classify this animal.

SanAntoneAg said:

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TPWD doesn't raise rainbow trout.

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Really? So help me out here... where do the trout come from? Sorry for the derail, but I wanna get this right. I thought the hatcheries were part of TPWD.

The math has been mentioned but not highlighted. They are talking 6 million per year. The 50 years is just some wildlife guy's dream. Now you can argue 6 is still too much but in the big picture it's not much in our federal budget.

Ayto Siks said:

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SanAntoneAg said:

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TPWD doesn't raise rainbow trout.

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Really? So help me out here... where do the trout come from? Sorry for the derail, but I wanna get this right. I thought the hatcheries were part of TPWD.

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TPWD purchases stocker trout from other states in the fall and hold them until all are stocked by late winter.

They aren't breeding them, hatching eggs, rearing fry, raising them to adult stocker size, etc.

Quote:

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we purposely break something in nature we should fix it

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Is anyone claiming that what happened to the red wolves was purposeful?

Was the red wolf common before the advent of Europeans? How far back do our records of red wolves go? Are we, in fact, simply adding a new and additional carnivore to the environment, one that can mess up the current balance? Often, our "fixes" create a whole new set of problems. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.

But I assume that just about everyone on this Board agrees that we should be good stewards of the environment. Like most issues, though, the devil is in the details.

Yes, predator controls similar to what was done to the wolf in the west greatly harmed their populations, especially since this was the more populated half of the country.
Habitat loss, less directly purposeful but still our doing, was the other big factor in their decline. Amazingly, with all the national and state parks created, that's better today than it was through most our settled history; which makes their comeback more possible.
Exactly how far back they go I haven't looked, But yes they were here when European settlers arrived, it was one of the first animals they saw. They ranged all the way from Texas up the east coast at one point.

Reasonable people can disagree on what a good investment is. But we have saved many species and even sub species from extinction, spent good money doing it, and most here likely agree in retrospect they were worth saving. This one is too imo,