Dream of the Red Wolf – Pen & Ink with Digital Watercolor by Mande Matthews
I cannot remember the moment I became obsessed with red wolves.
I also cannot remember the moment I discovered their plight. That might be because I have aphantasia (an inability to see images in my mind’s eye), and aphantasiacs are known for poor biographical memory. Maybe not all of us, but I know I suffer from it.
What I do not suffer from is the inability to remember the feeling of something.
The feeling of knowing there were only a handful of red wolves left in the wild when I began my research a few years back. The uncontrollable sobbing, that deep-down kind that feels like a norovirus stomach flu attack, when I discovered their disappearance was largely due to human hands.
The great grief of nonsensical gunshots and car strikes. Of a shy and reclusive animal, once thriving in North America, once spirit animals to the local Native American tribes, reduced to vermin—hunters tracking, trapping, and shooting them, exchanging their scalps for shillings.
The North American Red Wolf is native to the United States and can only be found here.
It’s ours.
An American National Treasure. An apex predator, proven by science to be irreplaceable by other local predators in its ability to balance its ecosystem. To help everyone thrive, including humans.
And yet…and yet…
The precarious wild red wolves live on North Carolina’s Albemarle Peninsula, and conservationists report staggeringly low numbers.
I know. A vet friend, Chris Ford, who has volunteered for our rescue’s (Tails of Love Rescue) mass spay/neuter events on the White Mountain Apache Reservation (‘cause he’s an incredible guy), works with the red wolf recovery program to find and assess the health of newborn pups (and thank goodness they are finally reproducing in the wild again!). My last report on numbers was 24 left in the wild. Only 24.
Thankfully, that’s up from 2021—only a dismal 7-8 collared individuals known—when the courts mandated that the recovery program’s fostering and wild return be honored after nearly a decade of refusal and pushback from local farmers, hunters, and, of course, bureaucrats.
What I wouldn’t give to have lived back when red wolves roamed across the southeastern and southcentral United States, running in packs, free to roam, free to range, free. Free! Isn’t that an American right?
Can you imagine a time when the majority of humans in their habitat, Native Americans, viewed them as kin, teachers, and guides? How they were revered and treated with respect?
Can you imagine the moment John James Audubon and John Bachman spotted, then cited, what they had previously called the “Red Texan Wolf” in 1851, and documented its existence for the world?
But, even then, the poor red wolf faced adversity as soon as colonists with their tales of Big Bad Wolves arrived.
Livestock marauders.
Child snatchers.
Murderers.
Europeans had been born and bred to view wolves as evil menaces, yes, from fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood, but also from biblical tales of wolves as thieves, cutthroats, and dishonest leaders. The wolf suffered a branding smear campaign, was portrayed as the quintessential evil against agrarian society, and had been mostly eliminated in England by the time of King Henry VII’s rule.
So, old traditional baggage in tow, from the 1800s to the 1960s, red wolves were hunted to the brink of extinction as their habitat contracted to a small patch of wildlands in North Carolina.
Sound familiar?
Maybe that’s why it hurts so much. My own heritage is a part of that death and destruction, part of the decline of our National Treasure.
But, in 1967 (the year I was born!), red wolves were finally! listed under the Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966. A heroic endeavor was initiated, and all wild red wolves were rounded up, but only 14 genetically pure ones were chosen for a captive breeding program.
Unfortunately, their plight was far from over. The program faced many challenges over the years, and the species was declared extinct in the wild. Finally, in 1987, the first pups from the breeding program were released to the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge; the first wild-born litter would come in 1988. But it would take over twenty years, in 2012, for the population to peak at 100 to 120 individuals.
This should be the end of the story. The wolves should have thrived from this return from extinction.
But they didn’t. 2012 to 2021 marked a rapid decline due to car strikes, gun shots, hybridization with coyotes, and the lack of enforcement from local agencies, and the red wolf population hit a dangerous low of a confirmed 7-8 individuals (collared). Once court-ordered releases and management resumed in 2021, the population began to increase. And I’m hoping that we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past.
This plight inspired a subversive fairy tale retelling (still a work in progress) about the red wolves and a young “red riding hood” animal empath, along with many artworks. My attempt to restore the red wolf as kin, as guide, as teacher once again. To restore all animals to that sacred ground, really, as we share this big, beautiful planet with them.
For me, the red wolves live in a place in my heart, one that says, please don’t see them as mangy, dangerous predators and that’s exactly what I tried to communicate in my original pen and ink drawing, “Dream of the Red Wolf.”
Monarch butterflies, yet another endangered species, are born from and take flight from the red wolf’s mane in my statement of this tale’s transformation. We see monarchs as beautiful and worthy of our protection. Likewise, we must transform our old fairytale beliefs of the Big Bad Wolf into valuable, beautiful creatures, our National Treasure species, if you will.
Red wolves occupy an apex-predator role in their wild habitat, a role scientific studies show cannot be replaced by any other predator. If we lose them, we risk irreparable ecosystem imbalance, loss of environmental biodiversity, and real human risks, such as zoonotic diseases from raccoon overabundance and agricultural crop losses.
So. I propose a rebrand from Big Bad Wolves to Big Beautiful Wolves. Will you join me?
I used 003 and 005 micron pens for the original red wolf on Bristol paper, then added digital watercolor in Photoshop using Kyle’s watercolor paintbrushes. It was only after I’d completed the drawing that I realized what the monarch butterfly addition was trying to tell me (as I told you above).
Here’s a video of the process: (Don’t see the video? Make sure you’re on my official site: mandematthews.com.
Available as a Signed Giclee Art Print or Greeting Card at 11StorybookLane.Etsy.com (Also – I’m creating an online store for my site so you can buy it right here soon, without the additional Etsy fees!)
Hugs and Magic,
Mande Matthews
P.S.
As you can see, wolves are not the Big Bads of the fairy tales after all. If you’d like to support efforts to save this beautiful North American treasure, visit The Red Wolf Coalition. This nonprofit partners directly with the boots on the ground—the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Red Wolf Recovery Program.
Also, if you want to dig deeper, this incredible documentary follows red wolf federal biologist Chris Lucash and his battle to save red wolves: Staring Down Fate. But be warned: bring tissues. Lots of tissues.