Saving America's native red wolf

There are only 20 of them left in the wild and they all live in one wildlife refuge in the U.S.  Meet the red wolf.

Transcript

00:00This is our wolf. It was solely native to the United States.

00:17This is a species that's on the brink of extinction.

00:20It's the most endangered wolf in the world.

00:39They have longer legs and longer, leaner bodies, but they don't weigh near as much.

00:45They also live in family groups as opposed to packs.

00:49So there's one male and one female and up to two years of offspring.

00:53They are just like your puppies at home.

00:55You've got the goofballs and you've got the serious pups and you've got the ones that

00:59try and help mom and dad lead and just seeing those personalities develop over time is very

01:04unique and very special.

01:18Lo and behold, our government even put bounties on these animals and they were almost hunted

01:23to extinction.

01:36They brought those wolves into managed care, into zoological institutions across the United

01:40States and started the first ever breeding program to help bring the numbers for the

01:46population back up so that they could eventually release them back into the wild.

01:51We know now that all the animals that are alive today, both under human care and in

01:55the wild, are descendants of those 14 animals.

02:03Here in the southeast portion of the United States, it is pretty heavily densely populated

02:19with people.

02:20They do run into people and roads quite a bit more frequently than the gray wolf would.

02:25Landowners are afraid that a wolf being reintroduced and brought back to an area is going to hurt

02:29their livelihood, whether it's they hurt their livestock or they make it harder to farm on

02:35their property.

02:36And I can tell you, the different wolf species I worked with all share one trait.

02:40They are scared to death of people.

02:42They want nothing to do with them.

03:04Myself and one of our keepers actually got to fly with our wolves to North Carolina,

03:09make sure they stayed safe the whole flight.

03:10The two animals that we brought down actually were put into two different packs and got

03:15to meet two new mates.

03:18And so they got to bond with their mate before they were released into the wild.

03:21I may have cried a few times along the way of just, you know, excitement and pride that

03:27this is happening.

03:29I know that we will be able to hear the song of the red wolf for generations to come.