The red wolf (Canis rufus or Canis lupus rufus), also known as the Florida black wolf or Mississippi Valley wolf, is a canid native to the southeastern United States of unresolved taxonomic identity. Morphologically it is intermediate between the coyote and gray wolf, and is of a reddish, tawny color. The Red Wolf is a federally listed endangered species of the United States and is protected by law. It has been listed by IUCN as a critically endangered species since 1996. It is considered the rarest species of wolf and is one of the five most endangered species of wolf in the world.
Red wolves may have been the first New World wolf species encountered by European colonists, and were originally distributed throughout the eastern United States from the Atlantic Ocean to central Texas, and in the north from the Ohio River Valley, northern Pennsylvania and southern New York south to the Gulf of Mexico. The red wolf was nearly driven to extinction by the mid-1900s due to aggressive predator -control programs, habitat destruction, and extensive hybridization with coyotes. By the late 1960s, it occurred in small numbers in the Gulf Coast of western Louisiana and eastern Texas. Fourteen of these survivors were selected to be the founders of a captive-bred population, which was established in the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium between 1974 and 1980. After a successful experimental relocation to Bulls Island off the coast of South Carolina in 1978, the red wolf was declared extinct in the wild in 1980 to proceed with restoration efforts.
