Without his load of indigestible trash, the chick"s health improved. But just before the 120-day check, the field biologist on duty, observing the nest through a high-powered scope, noticed the chick playing with three pieces of gla.s.s, swallowing them and spitting them out. And sure enough, when team members went in to check him at the prescribed time, they could feel something hard in his crop. Fortunately, they were able to ma.s.sage the objects gently out of the crop and into the throat, then remove them with forceps-they were the same three pieces of gla.s.s that he had been seen playing with. This preoccupation with trash is certainly one of the worst behavioral problems that the team must try to solve.
One suggestion to reduce behavioral problems was to release some of the original wild-caught birds from the 1980s to serve as role models. This was done, but while these birds do indeed represent a priceless behavioral resource, part of their behavior is wide-ranging foraging, which can make them especially susceptible to lead poisoning-and in fact, one of the original females did suffer serious lead poisoning after her return to the wild. Noel feels strongly that no more should be released until the lead-contamination problem has been solved.
Faith in the Future From the very start, Noel told me, nearly all program personnel have agreed that this issue is critical. But for more than twenty years-since the first sick condors were diagnosed with lead poisoning-nothing was done to remove the source of the problem, largely because no good subst.i.tutes for lead bullets existed. By 2007, however, a variety of nontoxic ammunition had come on the market, and on October 13 that year Bill AB 821 prohibiting the use of lead bullets for hunting large game in the range of the California condor was signed by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and subsequently pa.s.sed by the legislature. This was the result of pressure on the lawmakers from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and many conservationists.
Some environmentalists felt that the bill was a cop-out-that so long as the bullets were made, it would be hard to enforce the law. But when I talked with Governor Schwarzenegger about this, he said that the range of the condors was so vast, there was not much of California left where lead bullets could be used. He thought manufacturers would not think it worthwhile to continue making them. In any event, pa.s.sing this bill is a major step forward, and I, for one, congratulate the governor for supporting it.
Although the future of the released individuals is not a.s.sured, the investment, in time and the commitment and dedication of the men and women involved, has been a success-for without intervention, the California condor would most certainly have gone extinct. Instead, there are nearly 300 of these magnificent birds, and 146 of them are out in the wild, soaring the skies above Southern California, the Grand Canyon region of Arizona, Utah, and Baja California.
Those who watch the condors in the wild are moved. Mike Wallace, one of the field biologists who oversaw the release of captive-bred condors in the Baja, sent me a wonderful story about observing the mating rituals and unique personalities of these amazingly social birds (which you"ll find on our Web site). My friend Bill Woolam wrote to me about the wonder of seeing this giant bird when he was hiking in the Grand Canyon-watching the condor flying up and up with those huge and powerful wings, hearing the wings flapping and the air whistling through the feathers as the condor glides down-the music of flight. And Thane, too, recently wrote to me about the joy of seeing five of the fifty or so condors living near the Grand Canyon when he was rafting there in 2008.
The more people who have this kind of experience, and who realize how nearly this amazing bird vanished forever, the more they will care. And their number is growing-there are legions of people who are pa.s.sionate about California condors and their future. Noel, though officially retired, still feels a great personal commitment. The condor, he told me, "comes to dominate your life whether you like it or not."
I have a legal permit to carry a twenty-six-inch-long wing feather from a condor. During my lectures, as Thane mentioned in his foreword, I love to take this by the quill and pull it, very slowly, from its cardboard tube. It is one of my symbols of hope and never fails to produce an amazed gasp from the audience. And, I think, a sense of reverence.
Archival photo. One of the original milu (Pere David"s deer) herds relocated to Woburn Abbey. After the milu became extinct in China in 1900, the eleventh duke of Bedford gathered together the few remaining milu from European zoos and brought them to Woburn Abbey. Thanks to his foresight, the milu was likely saved from global extinction. (By kind permission of the Duke of Bedford and the Trustees of the Bedford Estate) (By kind permission of the Duke of Bedford and the Trustees of the Bedford Estate)
Milu or Pere David"s Deer (Elaphurus davidia.n.u.s)
The first time I was able to see this rare and beautiful deer in its native homeland was in 1994, during my first visit to China. Dr. Guo Geng showed me round the Nan Haizi Milu Deer Park, just outside Beijing. Guo Geng is enthusiastic and pa.s.sionate about his work, which includes the education outreach for this park. A small part of the park was like a zoo-enclosures held various deer and a few other hoofed animals-but there was also a large fenced-in wilderness area, complete with small lake, home to a herd of Pere David"s deer-known in China as milu. How magnificent they looked grazing near the sh.o.r.e of the lake. They wore their grayish brown winter coats-but, said Guo Geng, their color changes to reddish brown during the summer. They are similar in size to the red deer of Scotland. One handsome male stood, seeming to look directly at me, proud and dignified. I could see no fences, no boundary to his wild s.p.a.ce.
As I stood there watching the milu, my mind suddenly jumped far back in time. I vividly remembered visiting a herd of these deer on the duke of Bedford"s estate in England, and hearing that they were highly endangered and had originally come from China. That was in 1956, when I was working with a doc.u.mentary film company in London and we were making a film at the estate. And now, forty years later, I was looking at some of the progeny of those very deer.
Extinction in China Their story amazes me. The milu was once common in the open plains and marshes along China"s lower Yangtze River Basin. But, mainly as a result of habitat loss and probably some hunting, they were on the brink of extinction by 1900. The last known wild individual was shot in 1939 near the Yellow Sea. Fortunately for the survival of the species, the emperor of China had installed a large herd in his Imperial Hunting Park (Nan Haizi Park) near Beijing. The deer thrived in this park, which was surrounded by a forty-three-mile-long wall and guarded by a Tartar patrol.
In 1865, Pere Armand David, a French Jesuit missionary, introduced the deer to the Western world. He had been pa.s.sionately interested in nature from childhood, and had always wanted to go to China. He became a missionary, and his dream was realized when he was given a leave of absence for five months to tour in China. During this time, he collected numerous undescribed (at least to Westerners) plants and insects and sent them back to the natural history museum in Paris for study. He also described the golden monkey, some pheasants, and a squirrel, and was the first person to describe a giant panda to the West.
Historical photo of Pere David himself, an extraordinary naturalist and explorer: savior of the milu. (Reprinted with the permission of the Deandreis-Rosati Memorial Archives, DePaul University, Chicago, IL) (Reprinted with the permission of the Deandreis-Rosati Memorial Archives, DePaul University, Chicago, IL) During one of his travels, just outside Beijing, he came upon the wall that concealed the Imperial Hunting Park. Managing to look over, he saw some strange animals that looked a bit like reindeer, but he soon realized they were not. Back in Beijing, he tried to discover something about them and, failing, returned with an interpreter to the hunting park. Eventually, by providing some woolly caps and mittens to the guards (though one story says twenty silver pieces), he persuaded them to bring him some pieces of antlers and skin. Pere David sent these precious specimens back to France, where they were examined and p.r.o.nounced to be from a new species of deer-which was named in his honor.
There was a keen desire in Paris to obtain some live specimens. Eventually, after many failed attempts, the Chinese emperor was persuaded to gift three individuals to the French amba.s.sador. Sadly they did not survive the arduous sea journey. But after further negotiations with the imperial staff, a few more pairs of the deer were gifted and this time arrived safely in Paris. There was much excitement about the arrival of the first Pere David"s deer; eventually zoos in Germany and Belgium, as well as the Woburn Abbey park in England, also acquired specimens.
Soon there were approximately two dozen deer in Europe, in addition to the large herd remaining in China, and the survival of the species seemed a.s.sured. But in 1895, catastrophic floods devastated China, and a part of the wall surrounding the imperial park was destroyed. Many of the deer were killed by the floods; others that escaped through the breach in the wall were hunted and killed by the starving population. Still, between twenty and thirty survived in the park-enough to maintain the species. Alas, five years later they perished during the Boxer Rebellion, when troops occupied the imperial park and killed and ate every single deer.
Surviving in Europe Thus the future of the deer depended on the few individuals in Europe-and the zoos found that they were reluctant to breed. When news of the slaughter of the last deer in China reached Herbrand, eleventh duke of Bedford, he realized the need to consolidate the scattered groups if the species was to be saved. Eventually he persuaded the various zoos to sell their animals, and by 1901 he had collected a total of fourteen Pere David"s deer in the park at Woburn Abbey-the last individuals in existence. There were seven females (two of whom were barren), five males (one of whom established himself as the dominant stag), and two youngsters. It required years of patient management before these last survivors of a once abundant species began to breed.
In 1918, when the population numbered around ninety animals, they suffered yet another major setback: World War I caused widespread food shortages in Britain, which meant not enough food for the exotic deer, and the population was reduced to just fifty. After the war, numbers again began to increase, but in 1946, when the population of Pere David"s deer had risen to three hundred, World War II created more shortages of food-and in addition, the herds were threatened by nearby enemy bombing. At this point, the duke of Bedford realized it would be wise to spread out the breeding population. By 1970, there were breeding groups of Pere David"s deer in centers all over the world, with over five hundred at Woburn Abbey alone.
Planning the Return of the Milu The decision to try to reintroduce these Chinese deer to their homeland was the idea of the then marquis of Tavistock, later the fourteenth duke of Bedford. It was not an easy operation, but finally, in 1985, twenty-two Pere David"s deer-which would henceforth be known as milu-set off from Woburn Abbey to Beijing, accompanied by one of their keepers. In 2006, during my annual visit to Beijing, I told Guo Geng that I needed to know more of the history of the deer"s return to China. He told me that I should talk to a Slovakian woman, Maja Boyd. We planned to meet in Beijing, but sadly that meeting never took place as her cousin died, suddenly, and she had to fly back to Slovakia. However, just before Christmas that year, we spoke by telephone-she was in Slovakia, and I was in Bournemouth.
By the end of the conversation, I felt I had tapped into Maja"s warm and giving personality. She wanted me to know that when her late husband had first taken her to America, she had watched a film about me and the Gombe chimpanzees. "I so badly wanted to do something like you!" she said. Her American husband had been a good friend of Lord Tavistock, as the duke of Bedford then was. And when Maja learned about his plan to send Pere David"s deer to China, she was fascinated. "It was the deer," she told me, "that took me to China."
She would have loved to release the deer into a really wild place. "But," she said, "the government chose the site, and we needed their full support." And it made good sense, for the place chosen for the deer park was once part of the Imperial Hunting Park as well as being close to the center of government in Beijing.
Maja Boyd, a guardian of Pere David"s deer, shown here with a hand-reared female deer at the Nan Haizi Milu Reserve, Beijing. The young deer"s mother died soon after giving birth. Maja told me that this deer "followed me around like a dog." (Maja Boyd) (Maja Boyd) Maja had gone to inspect the area prior to the return of the deer. She found that part of it was a tree nursery-which was fine. But there was also a pig farm, which Maja felt was not appropriate. The government agreed to move the pigs. Then they had to block access for a stream that flowed through the area, since it was horribly polluted. They dug nine little wells to provide water for the animals and embarked on the major project: filling the lake with clean water.
The new arrivals deserved the best the Chinese could give them. But there was another major problem. The officials in charge of building the required quarantine sheds insisted that they be designed like the traditional stall for cows or horses-with a half door. No matter how often Maja explained that deer were different, and would immediately leap over a half door, the Chinese would not, or could not, believe her. Matters came to a head when Lord Tavistock"s eldest son, Andrew Howland, arrived to inspect the accommodations for his precious deer. He was horrified when he saw the row of sheds with half doors, and insisted that they physically break down the doors. After this the doors were rebuilt-correctly! Finally, all was ready.
Return to the Ancestral Homeland And so, in 1986, the twenty-two deer that had been born on an estate in faraway England-some of them, perhaps, offspring of those I had seen when I visited Woburn Abbey in 1956-set off for China. It was a long plane journey but much quicker than the sea voyages their ancestors had endured. Maja vividly remembers the day they arrived. She found it fascinating that they were traveling Air France. "These deer were first introduced to the Western world by a French missionary, and they came back on a French plane." Everyone was so excited that they forgot what they were supposed to be doing as they struggled to get closer for a first glimpse of the historic cargo. The containers were jostled, and both Maja and the keeper who had traveled with them from the UK feared the cages would fall and the deer escape. Fortunately, although they had not been sedated, the deer themselves remained very calm. "In fact," said Maja, "they behaved much better than the humans present!"
Finally all the cages were loaded onto trucks, and the deer set off on the last part of their long journey. Maja said she felt so sorry for the hundreds of excited people who lined the roads, hoping for a glimpse of the new arrivals, because all they saw were the trucks. What a moment when the deer finally entered their quarantine quarters and stood on Chinese soil-where their ancestors had roamed half a century before. Right from the start the Chinese were very proud of the project, and there was a great deal of publicity. Children, in particular, were interested.
"We got a lot of letters from kids," Maja told me. She remembered one in particular from a five-year-old girl. Her parents had given her two RMB (at the time, this would have been about seventy-five cents) for a month"s pocket money. She sent it to the deer park and asked if they would "please buy chocolate for the uncle and auntie Milu so they know they"ve arrived in a country that welcomes them."
There was one unexpected outcome of the return of the milu. When local villagers heard about the deer park, they realized that it would be a perfect place, quiet and green, for burying the cremation remains of their loved ones. And so, after a death, they went there and dug little graves in the park. Maja told me she was once walking the grounds with a Chinese official. He looked at the graves and announced, "We must eliminate these." But Maja told him that in her native country-Slovakia-it is very bad luck to desecrate a grave. The official looked around, took her by the hand, and whispered that they, too, feel the same. So today there is a special place where one can see little mounds-and the people have permission to return there every year during the Qing Ming Festival at the beginning of April, when Chinese pay their respects to the dead.
Visiting the Pere David"s Deer at Woburn Abbey Maja arranged for a few of the Chinese scientists involved with the Pere David"s deer to visit the UK, and a highlight was their visit to Woburn Abbey. There they would meet the people who are working to maintain the herds outside China. I was hoping to join them, but unfortunately the Chinese delegation arrived the day I had to leave for America. Still, I was able to meet Maja for the first time during my visit to Woburn Abbey, and Lord Robin Russell (son of the duke of Bedford) was a charming host.
For almost a week it had been raining, but after my sister Judy and I had driven all day in heavy rain, the sun came out to create a glorious spring evening. The gra.s.s was brilliant green, the old oaks a softer olive shade. At first, the only Pere David"s we found was one that had "double-shed"-lost his antlers before the rut and not yet grown new ones. Without them he could not compete with the others, and was probably wise to avoid the herd. We pa.s.sed herds of sika deer, roe deer, fallow deer-and the spectacular red deer. Where were the Pere David"s? We searched and searched, and finally found them down where it was very wet. What a wonderful sight-about two hundred of them, their coats a rich golden color in the light of the setting sun.
Too soon twilight began to fall and we had to leave them. But then, in the charming old cottage where Robin lives with his wife, we sat and talked deer. I got to know Maja better and learned more about the history of the Pere David"s project. Robin generously offered me access to the photo archives. And we discussed forming a collaboration between their education program and the Jane Goodall Inst.i.tute"s Roots & Shoots.
A Final Dispatch from China During my Asia tour in the fall of 2007, Maja arranged for me to revisit the milu park outside Beijing. There I was very pleased to meet two of the delegation to Woburn Abbey whom I had missed in the summer: Director Zhang Li Yuan, and Chinese Professor w.a.n.g Zongyi, who has been so instrumental in reintroducing the deer and such a very big help to Maja. After sitting and talking (with Maja translating) and drinking hot tea, we set off on a golf cart to see the deer. It was bitterly cold with icicles hanging down from some of the trees, and I was glad I had dressed warmly.
That tour depressed me. The first time I had visited the park, there had been a real feeling of being in the countryside, even though it is so close to Beijing. But now there is development pressing in from all sides. The herd of milu had grown. They had eaten all the available gra.s.s so that, especially in the winter, they needed supplementary food. They appeared healthy enough, but they were standing around their feeding troughs looking somehow weary-bored, perhaps. They almost looked like a different species from what I had seen in 1994; the sense of freedom and n.o.bility that had been so strong during my previous visit to this place was no longer there.
We were glad to get back inside the comparative warmth of the little environment center. As we enjoyed a truly delicious vegetarian lunch, my hosts told me about the twenty-five-hundred-acre nature reserve in Shishou in central China, on the Yangtze River. At the beginning of the 1990s, I heard, China"s National Environment Protection Agency had agreed that a small herd could be moved to this area, where they settled down well. And some individuals swam across the river and started a truly free-ranging population on the other side, in Hunan province. At first there were concerns that they would be hunted, but instead the local population reveres and protects them. Both Maja and Professor w.a.n.g Zongyi begged me to make time to go and see these milu, living in the wild as they did so long ago, and one day I should love to do so.
In the meantime, I carry around a gla.s.s medallion, given to me by Guo Geng, embossed with a drawing of the milu made during the Han dynasty (206 BCAD 220). And at our JGI office in Beijing, we have an antler, shed by a four-year-old stag, that I take to lectures when I am in China as one of my symbols of hope. It represents the resilience of animals if we just give them a chance. Since returning to China in 1985, the milu have prospered and their numbers have increased. There are about a thousand now, all told.
Red Wolf (Canis rufus)
When I was a child, I loved the legend of Romulus and Remus, the twins raised by a she-wolf in the forests of Italy. It gave a strange sense of authenticity to my favorite wolf story of all-the adoption of little Mowgli into a wolf pack, in Rudyard Kipling"s Jungle Book Jungle Book. And then came Jack London"s Call of the Wild, Call of the Wild, which not only reinforced my love of the wolf, but gave me a pa.s.sionate longing to spend time in the wilderness with these magnificent animals. which not only reinforced my love of the wolf, but gave me a pa.s.sionate longing to spend time in the wilderness with these magnificent animals.
It is unfortunate that wolves have been so hated and so feared. There are very few authenticated accounts of wolves attacking human beings in North America. Occasionally they will take livestock because, of course, we have moved farther and farther into their wild hunting grounds. And because of this, along with fear, they have been horribly persecuted in Canada, the United States, and Mexico-trapped and poisoned and hunted with bows and arrows, spears and guns. Even attacked from the air by people in helicopters. And in light of what we now know, thanks to numerous wildlife biologists who have spent years observing them in the wild, the all-out attempt to eradicate wolves can be seen as tragic, unjustified-and in a way extraordinary since they are indisputably the ancestors of "man"s best friend," the domesticated dog.
There are three species of wolves in North America, of which the gray wolf is the best known. Then there is its close cousin, the Mexican gray wolf. And the red wolf, the subject of this chapter. The three species have many similarities in behavior. A pack typically comprises a breeding pair and their offspring-yearling pups from a previous litter and the pups of the season. They are most active in the early morning and evening when they hunt as a pack. Small cubs, of course, stay in the den-initially with their mother-and other pack members return to feed them by regurgitating meat.
Art Beyer, USFWS wildlife biologist, checking out the health of wild pups, just a few days old. The parents will come back after the biologists leave and move the pups to a different secret location. (Melissa McGaw) (Melissa McGaw) Red wolves are recognizably smaller than gray wolves and about twice as large as coyotes-although yearling red wolves are almost the same in size and coloring as adult coyotes. At one time they were common throughout the southeastern United States, but predator control along with loss of habitat severely decimated their numbers during the 1960s, until only a few remained along the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana.
By 1973, when the red wolf was finally cla.s.sified as endangered, it was on the very brink of extinction. Scientists decided, in a desperate bid to save the species, to capture as many as possible for captive breeding with the goal of eventually returning them to the wild. Only seventeen were found. When the last of these was captured in 1980, the red wolf was declared extinct in the wild. All red wolves in existence today are descendants of fourteen of those individuals captured in the early 1970s.
From Pen to Freedom The breeding program, in which a number of zoos took part, was coordinated by the US Fish and Wildlife Service"s Red Wolf Recovery Program. By 1986, it was thought that there were enough young captive-born wolves to start the release program, and after careful surveys North Carolina"s Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge had been selected as the most suitable area. And so, fourteen years after the birth of the first captive litter of red wolves, four adult pairs were taken to their new home.
Of course, not everyone was thrilled at the idea of wolves roaming in the wild again. And so, in order to convince the public that, if things went wrong, the wolves could be easily recaptured at any time, scientists had been working on collars that could be remotely activated to discharge an anesthetic into the animal concerned. Unfortunately, these were not ready in time, and the four wolves, and others who followed, had to be held in large fenced enclosures for almost a year, much longer than planned. At least they had time to get accustomed to their new environment-its scents and sounds and some of the various animals they would meet in the field. And finally the day came when the first pair of wolves could be released to begin exploring their new wilderness home. The other pairs were released at weekly intervals.
It was a heady time for the Red Wolf Recovery Program field team. Chris Lucash, who continues to devote his life to this program, was part of the original team. I asked him how he felt when the wolves were first released. "How I felt? Wow! Excited, elated, incredibly-and naively-optimistic. I felt extremely fortunate, maybe even blessed, to be in a place at a point in time that was so rare and potentially such a pivot point in history, at least for one very historically unlucky species. This was the the most important thing I could be doing." It was a time, he told me, when they were filled with hope at every release. most important thing I could be doing." It was a time, he told me, when they were filled with hope at every release.
They did not fully realize the dangers these naive wolves would face. They did not guess that 60 to 80 percent of those wolves would not make it-would get sick or collide with a car as they tried to cross the roads that bisected their new home. And the field team felt devastated by each loss. "We had to learn to keep some distance, try not to get too emotionally involved," said Chris. That was one of the reasons why the wolves, for the most part, were not given names.
But it was impossible to remain absolutely detached, especially back then. There were only a few wolves, and the biologists knew them all personally; they handled them, followed their movements, tried to understand their behavior and motives. And when they had to capture them, they had to find ways to outwit them. "Our hopes and spirits rose high with the good news, and sank deep with the bad. Those of us here from early on had to do a lot of growing up-and it just happened to be in a.s.sociation with these animals." Chris and Michael Morse, another biologist from those first days who is still with the team, have shared some of those early stories with me.
A True Survivor Although the wolves are not officially named, for convenience the field team gave them names that usually derived from the location of the pack or some nearby geographic feature. "Not too romantic, but better than a stud book number," said Chris. And, for the most part, those are the names that I have used. Survivor, Survivor, though, is the name that I have chosen, retrospectively, for the first wild-born pup of the recovery program-because she survived against incredible odds. though, is the name that I have chosen, retrospectively, for the first wild-born pup of the recovery program-because she survived against incredible odds.
"Her captive-born parents were physically impressive and beautiful, but ill-fated," said Chris. It seems they only had the one pup; the biologists did not disturb the den at the time, but looked for signs later. A few weeks after whelping, Survivor"s mother crawled back to the release pen and into the den box from which she had been released about eight months before. And there she died of a uterine infection. Survivor, who could barely have been weaned before her mother died, survived, presumably, with the help of her father. Alas, a few months later she lost him, too-he died of asphyxiation with a racc.o.o.n"s kidney lodged in his trachea. For weeks, then months, there was no sighting of Survivor, although sometimes the team found tracks that could have been hers. And, indeed, against all odds she had survived.
Eventually she was captured and collared. She managed to evade death during a private trapping season (when trappers are allowed to trap furbearing animals as a form of nuisance control or as a "hobby"). In fact, she became very smart at avoiding traps, and when the team wanted to catch her-in order to replace her collar, for example-they had to work hard to outsmart her.
She eventually paired with a male, and they became the first wolves allowed to stay on private land, south of the refuge. After this, Survivor was captured-yet again-to replace her collar. It was to be for the last time, for the new collar stopped working, and they never found her again.
Brindled Hope Brindled Hope was one of the first wolves to be released in late 1987. It was months after her arrival from a wolf sanctuary in Missouri that they noticed her name, handwritten in small letters, on the back of her sky-kennel. She was not a very impressive-looking wolf, Michael told me. She was smaller than average-and at five years, older than most selected for release. Nevertheless she and the mate who had been chosen for her produced one of the first two pups born into the wild that year. The pup was a female, officially 351F but whom I am calling here Hope.
It was not long before disaster struck: Brindled Hope"s mate was killed by a car on the highway when their pup was only a month old. Brindled Hope, not knowing, waited for him as long as she could, but she needed to move to an area where there was more prey. And so, after eleven days, she set off toward the more open farmlands where she had once hunted with her mate. She and her pup traveled beside the highway, quickly moving into the thick vegetation whenever a car approached. There the team found the two of them, the pup struggling to keep up with her mother. Keeping their distance, the biologists followed until they reached a dirt road leading to the safety of the fields. First, though, the mother and pup had to cross the highway-and the biologists stopped traffic in both directions until the pair made it across. Brindled Hope successfully raised her pup, Hope, and eventually mother and daughter paired with the Bulls Boys and lived in their pack for many years.
The Bulls Boys Biologists prepare some captive wolves for release by raising them in wild settings on islands within wildlife refuges, where they can learn the survival skills they will need for their new life. Such were the Bulls Boys, brothers who arrived as yearlings in 1989 after living for almost a year on Bulls Island at Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge in South Carolina. They were released into what was known as the Milltail Farms area on the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge. "We had no clue that they would catapult the fledgling wolf project on the road to success," said Michael. "With their tall, lanky bodies, sizable feet, and broad heads, their appearance, although impressive, gave no hint of the substantial impact they would have on the recovery program."
The Milltail Farms area comprised some ten thousand acres of farms and forest where Brindled Hope had lived with her pup, Hope. When Hope was old enough to get by without her mother, Brindled Hope was recaptured, was paired with a new mate, and produced four new pups in captivity. Then she and her new family-including her mate-were released back into the Milltail Farms area. Surely, thought the biologists, there was plenty of s.p.a.ce for all. But the Bulls Boys-the Milltail pack-were not pleased, and within a month had attacked and killed the male intruder. Soon after this, one of the brothers-I"ll call him Boy One-paired with Hope; the other, Boy Two, paired with Brindled Hope, whose four pups, remarkably, were allowed to remain unchallenged.
It seemed that the Bulls Boys might each sire a litter in the next breeding season, and excitement ran high in the field team. "Second-generation pups were a major measure of the recovery program"s success, and it was happening in the first two years!" said Michael. But as he said to me, "It was all too good to be true." Boy One, from Bulls Island and not familiar with roads, was killed crossing a highway just before the 1989 breeding season.
However, the surviving brother grew stronger and stronger. In 2000, he reached the advanced age of twelve years and, no longer a "boy," became "the Old Man." He actually allowed one of his sons to establish and raise a family "virtually next door," in part of his territory. This was an arrangement that he probably would not have tolerated in his younger days, speculated Michael.
"But even though the Old Man may not have been the breeding male of his pack in his last days," Michael wrote in a letter to me, "he left a living legacy." By the time he died in 2002, he had sired at least twenty-two pups from seven litters. "His genes are today an integral part of the wild population of red wolves in northeastern North Carolina." Reading between the lines, I sensed that Michael had a deep affection for this wolf. And I knew I was right when I came to his last line: "And I hope it"s true, what the old-timers say-"All dogs go to heaven."" For what it"s worth, Michael, I"m sure they do.
The Gator Pack The wolves from Graham, Washington, here called Graham Male and Graham Female, ultimately became the breeding pair of the Gator Pack. They had arrived together at the start of 1988 and were released with mates who had been chosen for them. Those matchmaking efforts, however, were not successful: The two females that were successively offered to Graham Male were killed by cars, and Graham Female"s mate simply disappeared. And then Graham Female and Graham Male found each other and began consorting in the winter of 1989. They soon became inseparable: "Once they bonded, they were rarely apart," said Michael. Both grew to be very large in their prime, the male weighing a record eighty-four pounds and the female, sixty-five pounds.
Their home range was a vast sixty thousand acres of gum swamp and pocosins in the central portion of the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge-a relatively harsh environment compared with Milltail Farms. "Seldom seen by humans," wrote Michael, "the Graham pair-now the Gator Pack-lived in near seclusion," producing three litters. In 1992, a family group of wolves was released near one of the boundaries of the Graham Pair"s territory. "They ran off the adult pair and killed and ate the pups," said Michael. "It was the last time we attempted a release near them."
On April 1, 1994, Graham Male, aged nine years, was found dead in his territory: "It looked like he just lay down and died," Michael noted. And only four months later, his mate left the Gator Pack territory and went on "a long walk-about." As she was pa.s.sing through the home range of another wolf pack, the River Pack, to the north, "she lay down at Deep Bay to die."
Red Wolf Recovery Team biologists Chris Lucash and Michael Morse check a litter of wild pups in northeastern North Carolina. The biologists perform a general health evaluation and insert a small transponder for identification purposes. (USFWS) (USFWS) Fostering Pups in the Wild And so, gradually, the captive-born wolves adapted to their wild home, gave birth, and raised pups. Despite the heartaches and disappointments, there were many success stories, too. The team became more confident as their understanding grew regarding what could and what would not work.
Even when it became clear that the reintroduction program was a success, it was still necessary (and remains so to the present) to maintain the captive population at about two hundred individuals. This is in part because additional wolves are needed to bolster the wild population, serving as a backup in case a disease wipes out those in the wild, and in part to provide stock for future reintroduction programs in different areas.
A few captive-born pups are returned to the wild very early in life-when they are between ten and fourteen days old, just before their eyes open. At this age, they are readily accepted and cared for by both the male and the female of a wild pack. This "fostering" is only done if a wild mother has lost all or some of her own litter, or has a very small litter that allows her to manage one or two extra pups. Fostering of this kind not only boosts numbers of wolves in the wild but also, because pups are selected carefully, helps maintain the genetic viability of the population. I was fascinated to hear about this, and how it all began.
The first time it was tried was in 1998. "It was," Chris told me, "a bit of an act of desperation and/or lack of alternatives." A captive female killed one of her three newborn pups, and when it was found that she had done this before, at the small zoo where she had been kept, it was decided not to take chances with the two remaining pups. They were taken from her and, rather than being hand-raised, were placed in the den of a wild female. The team believed this would work based on experience with captive fostering, but nevertheless it must have been a wonderful moment when those little pups were immediately accepted by the female, who raised them with her own youngsters.
Sometimes the field team comes upon wild pups that have to be fostered. Once, a female was discovered dead in the area where it was believed that she had a den. A search revealed two pups, weak and dehydrated but still alive. They had been without their mother for at least two to three days. "After two days of reviving them as best we could," said Chris, "we located another wild female with similar-aged pups, who accepted and raised the fostered ones as her own."
Collars and Radio Tracking Approximately 65 to 70 percent of the wild red wolves in northeastern North Carolina are wearing telemetry collars, either the standard VHS variety or one of the new specially designed GPS-enabled collars that use satellites to automatically record their location-and that of the wolves wearing them-four or five times each day. This information is stored in each collar, and every one to two months the biologists can download it all at once with a special receiver. These data-which can consist of three to four hundred locations!-are then used to create a map that will show movement patterns, habitat preference, and home-range size as well as proximity to any other wolf who happens to be wearing a collar.
Michael sent me, from one of his reports, an example of wolf tracking with this technology. Wolf "11301M" was collared as a yearling when he was still living with the pack in his natal home range. Over the next year, the data regularly obtained from his collar provided the field team with a wealth of information. First they learned about his movements in his original home range. Then, when he left his natal area in the spring and began his travels, they learned where he went.
"He seemed to go from wolf pack to wolf pack looking for a place to live," wrote Michael. "... He skirted the core areas of the adjacent packs in order to stay out of trouble with other wolves (a smart thing for a young single wolf) ... and he moved completely around Lake Phelps before stopping on Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge." There he found a female wolf who had just paired with a sterilized, radio-collared wolfcoyote hybrid. The hybrid was soon displaced from the area and subsequently was found dead (located by his telemetry signal). Examination of his body showed that 11301M had almost certainly killed his rival. The victorious male then paired with the female, and together they will form the new Pocosin Lakes pack.
A Successful Program In 2007, there were about a hundred red wolves, in some twenty packs, well established in the wild. Since the first were released some twenty years ago, about five hundred pups have been born in the wild population. The first experimental population release area was expanded to include three national wildlife refuges, a Department of Defense bombing range, state-owned lands, and private property-about 1.7 million acres in five counties in North Carolina, and there are red wolf release sites across 15,445 acres of private land.
In fact, the Red Wolf Field Team achieved in five years (1999 to 2004) a level of success that some scientists had believed would take fifteen. Barry Braden, who headed the US Wolf Conservation Center for three years, told me that the management teams working to return the red wolf to North Carolina as well as the Rocky Mountain gray wolf to the Northern Rockies have been successful because there has been such excellent cooperation among government personnel, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and concerned citizen gra.s.sroots movements. "Of course," said Barry with a laugh, "these factions do not always agree, but they all care, and they sort it out." This is in sharp contrast, he told me, with the style of the management team working with the Mexican gray wolf project-which has not so far been a success.
The team leader for the Red Wolf Recovery Program, Bud Fazio, told me of his enormous regard for the biologists who are part of his field team-some of whom, like Chris Lucash and Michael Morse, have up to twenty-one years of experience working with wolves. All are dedicated field biologists who, for nearly seven days per week and sometimes twenty-four hours per day, handle and monitor the wild red wolf population, manage coyotes, take part in education programs, talk to landowners, and resolve the many problems that crop up in a field program of this scope and complexity. The work can be physically demanding. Chris gave me an example.
"Whelping season is a brief period each spring that the field biologists both look forward to and dread," Chris said. First they must find the den following signals from the mother"s radio collar (or the father"s if she has lost hers). Having located the pups, they check their health, weigh them, take a drop of blood from each for a genetic record, and insert a tiny transponder chip under each pup"s skin for lifelong instant identification (as we do with our dogs). It doesn"t sound too difficult, but according to Chris-and this is the dreaded part-the wolves choose isolated places, as unapproachable as possible, for whelping. And "the whelping season also coincides with other uninviting seasonal changes: the beginning of high heat and humidity, the prolific growth of th.o.r.n.y vines and poison ivy, and the burgeoning population of biting insects."
And so, Chris continued, "For long stretches, I have to drag myself on my elbows through low narrow tunnels, through dense shrubs and downed trees overgrown with blackberry and entwined with honeysuckle, greenbrier, and grapevine, driven on by the fleeting hope of finding a den or a pup-but also by the unnerving thought of countless seed ticks traveling up my clothing and the maddening realization that dozens have already made it through to my skin."
Usually such a search takes hours, and often it is unsuccessful. The mother whom they are tracking may not be at the den; if she hears them approaching, she may lead them in the wrong direction. "Some years," said Chris, "I find nothing but lonely, empty daybeds, followed then by several weeks of itching."
Coyotes, Farmers, and Other Challenges One major problem for the recovery plan is the migration into red wolf release sites of coyotes (not native to this part of North Carolina). This has led to two problems. There is a lot of hunting in the area, and unfortunately the coyote is becoming increasingly popular with hunters. Red wolves are sometimes mistaken for these eastern coyotes, particularly young wolves who, as was mentioned, look very similar in size and color, and this has led to a number of red wolves being shot by mistake. Thus, educating the public about red wolves is a major challenge. The second coyote-related problem is that red wolves will mate with coyotes when they cannot find a red wolf to mate with, thus creating a hybrid animal. The Red Wolf Recovery Program"s coyote control strategy is attempting, with some success, to establish a coyote-free zone in and around the area into which the red wolf has been introduced.
For the most part, people have been tolerant of the return of the red wolf to its ancestral range, and fortunately the wolves are typically shy animals, and usually avoid humans and human activities. There are, of course, farmers who believe that the wolves are a threat to their livestock, but these fears have proved ill founded. During the first twenty years of the program, the wolves were seldom found guilty of killing domestic animals. There were only three proven incidents-a duck, a chicken, and a dog. And on the positive side, red wolves prey on the nutria that were introduced into the area and are a nuisance to farmers. They also hunt the racc.o.o.ns who take eggs and young birds, and this may have led to an increase in bird populations, including quail and turkeys. All of this has helped to give red wolves a good reputation in the local community.
One of the most important aspects in any plan to release large predators is a good education program-and it must be prepared by people who understand and are sensitive to the concerns, fears, and prejudices of people living in the area. David Denton, hunter education specialist with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, together with the red wolf staff, works hard to ensure that people in the area understand, as much as possible, red wolf behavior and how to behave if a red wolf is encountered. They also teach hunters to recognize the difference between young red wolves and coyotes.
Howling with the Wolves For the last ten years, the Red Wolf Coalition, the only red wolf citizen support organization, has pursued its mission of educating people by spreading awareness. Extremely popular are the "Howling Safaris": People can visit the refuge to hear the magical chorus of a red wolf pack. I remember so clearly when I first heard wolves howling in Yellowstone National Park. It is utterly unforgettable.
Field biologists sometimes howl to the wolves they know so well. "You never forget," Michael Morse wrote to me, "the first time a wild wolf responds to your howls, offered into the dark night." On his first attempt he was not an accomplished howler, and he ended with a series of uncontrollable coughs-to the great amus.e.m.e.nt of the senior wolf biologists. "But they stopped laughing when the two newly released red wolf brothers returned my howl!" said Michael. "And although my vocal cords felt scorched, the swelling sensation in my chest and mind made all else insignificant."
It did not surprise me to learn that the Red Wolf Recovery Program won America"s highest conservation honor in 2007, the North American Conservation Award from the a.s.sociation of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA). So many people have worked with and for the program in so many different capacities, giving so much of their lives, since it was first launched. And I know that for all of them, whether they are donors, partners, volunteers, or the biologists working long hours in often demanding circ.u.mstances, the knowledge that the red wolves are once more roaming freely in the land of their ancestors will be thanks enough. The best reward they could ask for will be the haunting sound of red wolves howling under the moon.
THANE"S FIELD NOTES
Tahki or Przewalski"s Horse
(Equus ferus przewalskii, Equus przewalskii, or or Equus caballus przewalskii) Equus caballus przewalskii) (cla.s.sification is debated) (cla.s.sification is debated) The first time I went to Mongolia, I said to myself, "Now, this this is a great place to be a horse." It is a place with no fences. And no phone or electric lines. A land of beautiful and strong people who are tougher than woodp.e.c.k.e.r lips. Of course, there"s not much shade. If you want trees, drive north for three days to Siberia. What makes the Mongolian steppes so famously good for horses is that this is a nation of high-desert gra.s.slands. is a great place to be a horse." It is a place with no fences. And no phone or electric lines. A land of beautiful and strong people who are tougher than woodp.e.c.k.e.r lips. Of course, there"s not much shade. If you want trees, drive north for three days to Siberia. What makes the Mongolian steppes so famously good for horses is that this is a nation of high-desert gra.s.slands.
And upon this shadeless gra.s.sland, with that strength Mongolians are known for, the people of this country managed to save and restore the last truly wild horses of the world. Officially, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources listed Mongolia"s magnificent tahki-also called Przewalski"s horses-as extinct in the wild in 1968. But thanks to both captive breeding in zoos and leadership by Mongolian wildlife officials, I was able to gaze upon a restored wild herd in the summer of 2007.
My adventures in Mongolia have been in the company of a most amazing PhD wildlife biologist named Munkhtsog. Today he is one of the nation"s leading scientists. It is through him that I have been able to get a glimpse of the effort it has taken to save them.
When humans first walked out of Africa fifty to seventy thousand years ago to spread across Asia and Europe, they viewed the huge herds of wild horses as prey. Eventually, of course, humans domesticated horses from wild stock, selectively breeding them for everything from transportation to work to simple beauty. However, along the way, domestication and spreading human settlements led to the extinction of the word"s wild herds.
Then, to everyone"s great surprise, European explorers reported seeing herds of ancestral wild horses in Central Asia. One of these explorers was Colonel Nikolai Przewalski, the Russian explorer sent by the czar on a Lewis-and-Clark-style voyage of discovery to see what was worth taking in the Gobi Desert. In 1881, Przewalski was the first to describe this mule-like horse as living in small herds of five to fifteen in the Takhiin Shar Nuru Mountains near the edge of the Gobi.
Przewalski"s horses may be mule-shaped, but they are much lovelier creatures. They have tawny hair that is thick for the harsh winters and golden reddish in the early light of dawn, which is the best time to see them. Like many herd animals, they are naturally wary, and mothers are clearly attentive to their foals. Always on the alert, the dominant stallion will move the herd as he sees fit, but all the members stay alert for predators. but they are much lovelier creatures. They have tawny hair that is thick for the harsh winters and golden reddish in the early light of dawn, which is the best time to see them. Like many herd animals, they are naturally wary, and mothers are clearly attentive to their foals. Always on the alert, the dominant stallion will move the herd as he sees fit, but all the members stay alert for predators.
By the turn of the twentieth century, there was a frenzy among European zoos to exhibit this already rare and elusive species. Naturally, travel was harsh from southwest Mongolia all the way back to the London and Rotterdam zoos, and many of the horses perished in transit. And as fate would have it, it was a good thing that Prze-walski"s horse was taken into captivity. By 1968, due to hunting and habitat loss (among other factors), the species was completely extinct in the wild.
At that time it was thought that the sounds of wild horse herds would never again be heard on earth. Even in the United States, our "wild" horses, such as the mustang, were once domesticated, then escaped and returned to wild status. The Przewalski"s horse was never domesticated, which is why it is considered the last truly wild horse.
Fortunately, from just a stock of thirteen zoo animals, the species has made a remarkable comeback and can again be seen in Hustai National Park, where they thrive. The horses have even become a draw for foreign tourists, as well as conservationists.
Today more than fifteen hundred Przewalski"s horses live in zoos and captive breeding herds from Ohio to Ukraine, and more than four hundred roam in protected parks in Mongolia and China. The challenge, of course, is that all these animals share the genes of only those thirteen "founder" horses-the last remaining genetic stock after the species was finally extirpated from the wild. As a result, even relatively large herds are more susceptible to disease than in other, more diverse species. Fortunately, the Przewalski"s horse is clearly recognized as a priority to international conservation programs, and intense cooperation continues between the managers of the captive and wild herds to ensure adequate veterinary care and genetic management for the future.