If you want to capture something wolflike, it’s best to embark before dawn. So, on a January morning, this reporter drove with two young scientists into a blanket of fog near Houston. Master’s student Tanner Broussard, a quiet man with a beard and a black ball cap, peered into the darkness from his Toyota Tacoma, checking traps set for the creatures that dominate this landscape: the so-called ghost wolves.
Once, the red wolf (Canis rufus) was the apex predator here. A 'war on wolves' lasting 200 years, as federal researchers once evocatively put it, led to the species being declared extinct in the wild by 1980. Yet, strange wolflike creatures persisted. In 2018, scientists confirmed some local coyotes were taller, long-legged, and cinnamon-shaded - they contained relict red wolf genes. They became the ghost wolves.
Broussard’s obsession with these animals narrowed his academic focus. Then, last year, he woke to disconcerting news. A startup called Colossal Biosciences, which had made headlines for claiming to resuscitate the 10,000-year-extinct dire wolf, simultaneously announced it had cloned four red wolves. 'That surprised pretty much everybody in the wolf community,' Broussard said. The Association of Zoos and Aquariums' captive breeding program leadership had no idea. Nor did ecologist Joey Hinton, who had trapped the canids Colossal used for DNA. The clones' location was secret; their purpose, murky.
The red wolf has always been contentious. It’s the wolf of the East, once roaming from Texas to New York. Smaller than a gray wolf but larger than a coyote, it had a 'cunning fox-like appearance,' long body and legs, and a coat that could be reddish, white, gray, or even an ominous all black. By the time a mammalogist classed it as a standalone species in the 1930s, it was nearly gone.
Its decline was a boon for coyotes (Canis latrans), the 'wolf of the Anthropocene.' As red wolves dwindled in Louisiana and Texas, coyotes slipped in. The last red wolves decided a strange, smaller mate was preferable to no mate at all, creating a 'hybrid swarm.' By the 1960s, biologists worried. Their solution? A program of mass extermination. Trappers rounded up hundreds of canids. Those deemed true red wolves (by howls and skull shape) were taken to breed in captivity. Most of the rest were euthanized. To put it plainly: The red wolf was wiped out intentionally, in a roundabout effort to keep it alive.
Just 14 individuals survived; today’s wolves descend from 12 of them. They are the ark for the few hundred red wolves alive today: about 280 in the 'Species Survival Plan' captive population and another 30 or so roaming a federal refuge in coastal North Carolina, deemed 'nonessential' and 'experimental.' According to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, to be classified as Canis rufus, an animal must trace at least 87.5% of its lineage to those 12 founders.
The scientist leading the program knew this narrowed the gene pool precipitously - creating what could be an entirely new species. The notably black wolves, for example, were lost. But what other choice existed? A new kind of wolf, free of coyote 'taint,' seemed better than no wolf at all.
After learning of Colossal’s clones, this reporter traveled to eastern Texas. Over Tex-Mex in Winnie, graduate student Patrick Cunningham explained a core problem: 'We don’t have a good reference genome.' We can collect DNA from the descendants of the 12 founders, but not from the countless wolves killed. Extracting usable DNA from old samples is difficult.
Studies of available genes have proved controversial. Princeton geneticist Bridgett vonHoldt found little in the Species Survival Plan population's DNA to set it apart from other wolflike American canids. In a 2016 paper in Science Advances, she and coauthors wondered if there ever really was a separate southern wolf species. Perhaps the 12 founders were just coyotes with a smaller portion of wolf.
Her paper called for focusing less on species and more on the function a group performs. The red wolves deserved protection as creatures filling the same role as endangered wolves. Nonetheless, for Canis rufus, the timing was bad news. By 2016, state officials in North Carolina had turned against the recovery program. The wild population, once as high as 120, was falling. The US Fish and Wildlife Service had paused further releases. Now scientists were saying the red wolf showed 'a lack of unique ancestry.' Why spend money, some wondered, on a species that does not exist?
Part of the problem is that the concept of a 'species' is less sturdy than your high school biology teacher might have led you to believe. The rule that a species consists of animals that can produce fertile offspring is one various canids violate all the time. North America’s soup of Canis genes is less like a family tree and more like a braided river.
VonHoldt suggested the modern red wolf is a recently emerged channel in that river, part wolf and part coyote. But a year later, other researchers claimed her data, interpreted differently, could suggest the red wolf braid emerged tens of thousands of years ago. These nuances confused policymakers. 'Congress was just like, ‘What is going on?’’ Cunningham said. '‘Why is there not just a simple explanation for what this thing is?’’
Given the policy implications, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine tasked a panel with finding that simple answer. Their 2019 report declared the red wolf a species by virtue of its appearance and seemingly long-standing isolated population. As their study got underway, though, a new question was arising: what to make of a startup's secret clones.