he red wolf is a smaller relative of the well-known grey wolf and is one of the rarest species of the canidae family. This species was once common throughout the whole of the southeastern United States but by the mid-1960s a large proportion of the population had been lost due to habitat loss and intensive programs to control predation.
Red wolves are monogamous and form breeding pairs which mate for life. They generally live alongside their mate and offspring in small social groups called packs. Although this species has now been downlisted to critically endangered on the IUCN Red List, this species had once been declared extinct in the wild in 1980. It has only been able to achieve this new status through intensive conservation efforts which increased the number of individuals from the former severely depleted population. These conservation efforts have included a captive breeding program and reintroduction program where all individuals left in the wild were captured, bred and then the offspring reintroduced into the wild, therefore bolstering the population number and helping the species reach the current more stable status.