Red Wolf Memo

English 273.091
MEMORANDUM
Date: 03/05/17
To: Mr. Jack Timberlake
From: Madison Compass
Subject: Annotated Bibliography
The purpose of this memo is to explain the causes of extinction within the Red wolf population and the Black bear population. The topics chosen explain how this issue came about, what factors created, and provided some solutions on how to prevent it and keep these endangered species’ population thriving. There were several ways the black bear and red wolf came to the brink of extinction and these article provide multiple solutions to sustain and endangered species.
Brzeski, K. E., Rabon, D. R., Chamberlain, M. J., Waits, L. P., & Taylor, S. S. (2014). Inbreeding and inbreeding depression in endangered
Inbreeding most commonly creates dangerous or harmful alleles concerning the endangered species management. Inbreeding and hybridization are major threats to red wolf populations as it alters their physical traits like sperm quality, bone deformities, blindness and much more. The main reason why inbreeding and hybridization occurs is because of hunting and habitat loss resulting in the confinement of red wolves leaving them with one another or a closely related species to breed with. Researchers came to the conclusion that red wolves are expected to succumb to inbreeding due to their small population and isolated location (Brzeski et al., 2014).
Usually inbreeding is a great tool used to get more of the desired traits in livestock, but when it comes to wild animals the outcome is not as successful. I feel that inbreeding is only harmful to wild animals because unlike domesticated animals wild animals are not in a controlled environment. I believe that there is much more effort put into conserving endangered species in the wild. After all the programs made for red wolves, they still seem to not be at the desired or expected population
The author hypothesized that the cortisol levels would be different between the red wolves held captive and those in the wild due to different stressors and degrees of stress they are put through. They used fecal techniques to calculate the cortisol levels and found that higher fecal cortisol levels and stressful experiences resulted from translocation and captivity. Finally concluding that there is no difference in cortisol levels between wild and captive red wolves (Metzler 2015).
I feel that in order to manage the stress of red wolves, they should have a decent balance between living in the wild and captivity. Stress is unavoidable but if the wolves kept in a good environment their population would not be so vulnerable to depletion by stress. Although captivity causes more stress it is beneficial to building up the population of an endangered species as it reintroduces them into a safe environment. This article will be helpful in understanding how to conserve the red wolf population from the experiment conducted in the