Move to larger site is in works
By JOAN LITTLE
Post-Dispatch
After 32 years in St. Louis County, the Wild Canid Survival and Research
Center has decided to move to a larger, pristine spot of wooded land just
south of Eureka in Jefferson County.
The move still needs approval from the Jefferson County Commission, which
is expected to vote Dec. 3 on a zoning change that would allow it. The
rezoning has been recommended for approval by the county’s planning and
zoning commission.
The move means the center’s size will expand nearly tenfold, to 610 acres,
at the G.A. Buder III property at 3601 Highway FF, in northwestern
Jefferson County, from 65 acres at Washington University’s Tyson Research
Center.
It also means the center will be able to stay open to the public
year-round, said its director, Susan Lindsey. Currently, the center closes
from about mid-April through the end of May, when the female wolves give
birth.
The larger property will allow the center to separate its educational
exhibits from its breeding program, Lindsey said. It also will allow the
center to expand its educational programs and triple its holding capacity
for wolves, wild dogs and foxes, which now number 42.
Pristine and heavily wooded, the property has three lakes and has views
overlooking the Meramec River. It also has a 7,000-square-foot house that
the Wild Canid Center plans to use for a visitors’ center and offices.
Lindsey said the center probably will use about 400 of the 610 acres, with
the remainder being a buffer. The entire area will be encircled by 12
miles of fencing. The site will have pockets of animal enclosures, each
with a 15-foot fence.
Meanwhile, Washington University plans to use the space vacated by the
Wild Canid Center for biology and ecology programs. The university had
offered to relocate the center to another part of the 2,000 acres it owns
at the Tyson Research Center. But the center would have outgrown that in
about 20 years, Lindsey says.
With the new property, “We’re set for the next 100 years,” she says.
The center will continue to work with Washington University at its new
location. Lindsey said it will probably be about two years before the
center moves.
When it opened in 1971, the Wild Canid Center was the first conservation
center of its kind, said Lindsey. It was founded by Marlin Perkins, a
leading naturalist and former director of the St. Louis Zoo. The research
center is an internationally recognized leader in saving wolves. It has
more Mexican gray wolves than any other program. There were only four
Mexican pup litters born in the United States last year, and the center
here had three of the four.
Besides the Mexican wolf, it works with the endangered red wolf, the maned
wolf from South America and the Swift fox.