Posted: March 28, 2025 | Forestry Education
At Carolina Forestry & Realty, we spend every day working alongside landowners who value their property, their rights, and their way of life. That’s why we wanted to share an eye-opening episode of The Reason podcast that dives deep into a story that’s all too familiar to many rural North Carolinians—one that’s about more than just endangered wildlife. It’s about property rights, local voices, and what happens when government policy collides with private land ownership.
In The Best of Reason: When the Government Puts Wolves in Your Backyard, reporter Tate Watkins explores the decades-long saga of the red wolf recovery program in eastern North Carolina—a story that highlights how good intentions can clash with local realities.
We’ve embedded the full episode here in this post. We encourage you to give it a listen.
It all started in the late 1980s, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began releasing red wolves—an endangered species—into the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge. The idea was simple enough: rebuild the population of the most endangered canine in the world. But the execution was anything but simple.
What began as a small, controlled release on federal land quietly expanded over the years to cover nearly 1.7 million acres, spanning five counties and affecting countless private landowners. By 2012, the red wolf population peaked at about 120 animals, but it didn’t take long for things to unravel.
Local landowners weren’t consulted or compensated when wolves started showing up on their property. The wolves weren’t just passing through—they were living, hunting, and breeding in areas heavy with farming, livestock, hunting, and recreation. For many residents, it wasn’t just about the wolves; it was about who had a say over their own land.
The podcast episode does an excellent job of laying out how the red wolf became a lightning rod for concerns over government overreach. It wasn’t just about whether red wolves belonged in North Carolina—it was about what happens when a federal agency makes decisions affecting private property without real collaboration with the people who live there.
One of the more notable moments highlighted in the podcast is the 1990 case of Richard Mann, a local landowner who shot a red wolf out of fear for his cattle. He was prosecuted and fined under the Endangered Species Act because the wolf hadn’t yet killed anything—an incident that poured gasoline on local frustrations and became a symbol of the conflict between federal conservation policy and rural landowners’ rights.
Since then, the program has been mired in lawsuits, public backlash, and declining wolf numbers. By late 2024, the red wolf population in the wild had fallen to fewer than 20 individuals.
The story of the red wolf recovery effort is about more than just one species. It’s about rural communities that feel overlooked and pushed aside. It’s about how conservation efforts, when done without local input and respect for property rights, can backfire and breed resentment instead of cooperation.
The episode also touches on something we see in rural North Carolina far too often—the slow erosion of traditional ways of life. As small communities face challenges like declining populations, shuttered churches, and limited economic opportunities, programs like the red wolf recovery effort can feel like one more thing being imposed on them without their say.
One of the most compelling takeaways from the episode is that successful conservation doesn’t have to come at the expense of landowners. In fact, it works best when local communities are involved from the start. Programs that compensate landowners, like the recently launched “Prey for the Pack” initiative, offer a glimmer of hope. But they came decades too late and didn’t erase the hard feelings that built up over years of conflict.
As folks who work with landowners every day, we believe solutions only work when everyone at the table is heard.
Whether you’re a landowner, hunter, conservationist, or simply someone who loves the rural character of North Carolina, this episode is worth your time. It’s a well-researched, balanced look at how one government program—however well-intentioned—alienated the very people it needed to succeed.
Listen to the full episode of The Reason podcast below: