SALISBURY — Rowan County is accepting bids on planned renovations for the red wolf enclosure at Rowan Wild, located in Dan Nicholas Park.

According to Megan Cline, a naturalist and animal care specialist at Rowan Wild, the main portion of the renovations will be updating the animal’s concrete housing and increasing the amount of red wolves that the enclosure will be able to hold.

Expanding the housing will allow Rowan Wild to house more wolves from other in the case of emergency and adverse situations, said Cline. Currently, many red wolves are located in eastern North Carolina, where they face increased risks of storms and hurricanes. The largest amount of red wolves the enclosure has housed in the past was a family group of five that left in December of 2021.

Sealed bids are being accepted until 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 7. The bid opening is expected to be held directly after the deadline. After the winning bid is accepted by the county, completion is expected to take six months. When the project is finished, Cline says they plan to have red wolves in the enclosure as soon as reasonable. To that end, Rowan Wild has already worked with other organizations to bring in wolves.

Red wolves are listed as an endangered species, and were even declared extinct in the wild in 1980, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The wolves originally inhabited most of the Eastern U.S., with the wild population ranging from Eastern Texas to New Jersey. Just before the species went extinct, the USFWS trapped 14 wolves and began a captive breeding program in an attempt to increase their numbers.

Unfortunately, the five wolves released from Rowan Wild exemplify the issues the red wolf species continues to face in recovering its numbers. Of the five wolves, none remained in the wild at the start of 2023. After they left in December, the wolves were held in acclimation pens meant to allow them to prepare them for living alone in the wild until March of 2022. On March 31, the five were all released into the wild at the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.

Two members of the family were returned to captivity because they repeatedly attempted to return to and stay in residential or developed areas. One of the wolves was found dead in June, with the cause of death unknown at the time. Another was found dead in May and believed to have been killed by a vehicle. The final wolf was killed by a gunshot in April.

“None of the wolves released in 2022 did well. Unfortunately, it was due to a little bit of everything. People not being as accepting of them being in the area, but it’s also traffic,” said Cline.

The last population count in August 2023 by the USFWS estimated that there were between 23-25 red wolves in the wild, but only 13 are confirmed. A further 269 wolves were known to be alive in captivity.