Most people picture wolves as a western thing. But the red wolf is ours: a smaller, rangier, cinnamon-colored wolf that once ranged across the whole Southeast. By 1980 it was declared extinct in the wild. Every red wolf alive today descends from just 14 animals pulled into a captive breeding program.

They were reintroduced to the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge on the Albemarle Peninsula in 1987. The first time any predator declared extinct in the wild had been brought back. For a while it worked; the wild population climbed past 100. Today it's collapsed back to the teens, mostly from vehicle strikes and gunshot mortality (they're easily mistaken for coyotes).

I made a map of the sightings logged around the peninsula - Alligator River, Pocosin Lakes, the Dare County mainland (attached). It's a tiny footprint for the entire wild population of a species. That's kind of the point: this is the only wild red wolf population on the planet, and it's here, an hour or two from the Outer Banks beaches half of us drive past every summer.

If you're ever out that way at dusk, the refuge does "howling safaris" where you can actually hear them answer. Wild that this is a North Carolina thing.

The most endangered wolf on Earth lives in exactly one place, here in a corner of eastern NC. and there are fewer than 20 of them left in the wild.