[Robin] It's been 20 years since the end of a project
that tried and failed to reintroduce red wolves to the Smokies.
10News reporter Jim Matheny shows us the work to save a critically endangered species.
[Kelly] Red wolves are very secretive and very shy.
[Jim] Count every living red wolf in the world,
you'll find around 4 percent of that entire population
in this one enclosure at Zoo Knoxville.
[Kelly] Unfortunately, the outlook is pretty grim at this point.
We've only got about 25 in the wild right now.
The zoos are keeping this population alive.
There are around 250 wolves in managed care.
We have 10 of them here at Zoo Knoxville.
[Jim] The big reason red wolves nearly went extinct
is government programs put a price on their heads
to eliminate a predator that made farmers see red.
[wolves howling]
The red wolf became an endangered species in 1967.
[Man 1] There you go.
[Man 2] Doing a turnover.
[Man 1] There you go.
[Jim] By 1980, things were so dire
the last handful of red wolves still alive
were captured to breed them in captivity.
[whimpering]
[water splashing]
By the late 1980s,
a family of wolves re-entered the wild in Eastern North Carolina.
Then in 1991,
the program to save red wolves
found another place to try to let them roam free.
[Kim] The Fish and Wildlife Service actually contacted us
about the possibility of using the Smokies
to try to restore red wolves.
[truck engine running]
[James] If we can't do it well in our national parks,
we can't do it very well anywhere in the country.
[Jim] The first red wolves stepped out of their cages
and into the Smokies in November 1991.
[thumping]
Two more families followed the next year.
[clapping]
But not everyone celebrated their return.
[Kim] A lot of people were skeptical about bringing wolves in.
And I think farmers were concerned and they should have been.
[Jim] For all the wildlife in the Smokies,
there wasn't enough prey to feed families of wolves,
and some of them killed livestock.
[Kim] And so a lot of these animals left the park and went outside
and caused some issues outside.
[beeping]
[Jim] Biologists tracked the wolves with radio collars
and kept bringing them back inside the park boundary,
[leaves crunching underfoot]
where the real life-or-death battle
was with the birth of new pups.
[Man] We've had 30 pups born in the wild.
We don't have any surviving pups.
[Bill] The wolves would mate.
They would have pups.
But the pups would die of parvovirus.
[Jim] The wolves struggled with disease
and the invasion of a wily new canine.
[Kim] We had coyotes moving into the park.
[Jim] Coyotes compete for the same food as wolves.
And they can crossbreed
to contaminate an endangered gene pool.
[Kim] Because of the few number of red wolves,
there was some hybridization that went on.
They did cross with coyotes.
Of course, that's gonna, basically, spell the doom for the red wolf.
[Bill] So after eight years of effort,
they decided not to continue the project here.
[Jim] Biologists were able to find and recapture
all but one of the wolves in the Smokies.
The end result was disappointing.
But the park learned lessons that helped other programs,
including the successful reintroduction of elk in 2001.
[Kim] I think what we've learned from the red wolf, at least, is the process.
[Bill] How important it is to work with our neighbors.
[car drives by]
[Jim] And there's another lasting legacy in the park
from people who swear they see coyotes that look a lot like red wolves.
[Bill] Every year, I get people that call me that think they saw a red wolf.
Could there be some wolf genes out there?
That's possible,
but probably not likely.
[Jim] Even if there are lingering genes,
with every generation, they're deluded and virtually disappear.
It's up to places like Zoo Knoxville to preserve and protect this species.
[Kelly] Because of the Smokies project, it has brought here
a knowledge of red wolves and an appreciation of red wolves,
which is fantastic.
[camera shutter clicks]
[Jim] And Zoo Knoxville continues breeding healthy litters
to help this struggling species survive
and possibly keep the call of the red wolf in the wild.
[wolves howling]
[Kelly] That's the most important thing.
There are red wolves.
They need your help.
Once they're gone, that's the end and...
that's a sad day for all of us.
[Jim] In Knoxville, Jim Matheny WBIR 10News