“Officials with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will decide this fall whether a 27-year program aimed at returning the red wolf to the wild in the isolated swampland of eastern North Carolina will go forward.”
“Now they have letters from more than 500 landowners asking them to remove wolves from their property. It is what they promised they would do when all this began. We intend to hold them to it, even if they don’t want to do it.”
“Wildlife officials assured landowners the wolves would not be likely to stray onto their land. If they did, a call to the recovery center would bring a trained officer, who would trap the animal and take it back to the reserve.”
“If the animal was troublesome, a remote-control “capture collar” equipped with a tranquilizer would be detonated, knocking the canine out.”
“In addition, large parts of the protected land were flooded for waterfowl habitation. That forced the wolves to seek different hunting land.”
“Wildlife officials contend that the wolf population has a minimal impact on private land and that they rely on the cooperation of private landowners for the repopulation effort to succeed.”
“We would not leave them behind,” Miranda said. “Whatever the case, we still have our captive population to populate a new area.”<<<Read More>>>
