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Red wolf pups grow steadily at Durham museum

Red wolf pups grow steadily at Durham museum

(AP)

DURHAM, N.C. – While the five wolf pups at Durham’s Museum of Life and
Science aren’t yet long in the tooth, they are healthy, and quickly
getting longer legs and bodies since they were born April 10 to the pair
of endangered adult red wolves at the museum.

The litter originally included three male and three female pups, but a
half-pint male runt died at four days of age.

Sherry Samuels, animal director at the museum, recently joined other
museum staff members and veterinarian Debbie Vanderford for a health check
of the fast-growing pups.

Papa wolf paced nervously as the intruders approached his young and
removed them for their exams.

The process included all the usual poking and prodding, plus the infusion
of de-worming medicine and treating a cut on the eye of one of the pups.

Each red wolf is precious, since it was listed as an endangered species in
1967 under a law that preceded the Endangered Species Act of 1973. It’s
the most endangered mammal in its native North America, where fewer than
300 remain. Most of those were bred in captivity, in facilities such as
the one at the Durham museum.

When the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service established the captive red wolf
breeding program in 1973, biologists began to remove the few dozen that
remained in the wild in an effort to save the species from extinction. In
1977 captive pairs started producing offspring.

These animals were taken to the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium in Tacoma,
Wash. The red wolf was considered extinct in the wild by 1980, mainly
because of hunters.

In 1987, four captive pairs were reintroduced to the wild in the
120,000-acre Alligator River refuge near Manteo. They were equipped with
radio transmitters so biologists could monitor their movements. Additional
releases were made, and the first wild litter among the reintroduced
animals came in 1988.

The expanded reintroduction area now includes 100 wolves in 20 packs
ranging through 1.5 million acres of federal and private lands in Dare,
Hyde, Tyrrell, Washington and Beaufort counties

Another captive litter whelped April 19 at the North Carolina Zoo in
Asheboro. That facility also participates in the Fish and Wildlife
breeding program.

The federally operated captive rearing program involves some 30 facilities
nationwide. Besides the Durham museum and the Asheville zoo, the state
also boasts wolf breeding at the Western N.C. Nature Center, also in
Asheville.

Wildlife specialists started the captive population to conserve a diverse
genetic pool to represent the red wolf species.

Visitors who want to see Durham’s wolves can now do so through a unique
touch-screen viewing station, without disturbing them.

The monitor developed by the museum allows visitors to pan, tilt and zoom
a surveillance camera inside the red wolf enclosure.

“It is wonderful to see these endangered mammals on our edge-to-edge
interactive monitors and watch visitors share in their experiences,” said
Tom Krakauer, museum CEO and president.

The camera _ part of an all-weather outdoor computer kiosk developed at
the museum _ is an outgrowth of a $2 million grant from the National
Science Foundation. Related technologies developed by the museum for
outdoor kiosks include video microscopes, video thermometers and specimen
display cases.

The grant was part of BioQuest II, an $18.5 million expansion project.

Wolf fans who want to “talk” to red wolves in the wild can join in
supervised “howlings” held at the Alligator River preserve. Packs of
humans howl as a group, and the wild wolves howl back.

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