WOLVES, ELK, BISON AND THE CAROLINA PARAKEET

RARE AND SPECTACULAR CREATURES OF THE LOWCOUNTRY - PART IV:

Written by Michele Roldán-Shaw
Photography by Greg Koch

n the first three parts of this series, we have examined the history and local lore surrounding bears, devil fish and panthers in the Lowcountry. Now, for the final installment, we shall turn our attention to a handful of creatures that, in modern times, are virtually unknown here; in fact, it may surprise readers to learn that they ever lived in this area at all. Some, like the Carolina parakeet, are totally extinct.

We commonly think of wolves, elk and buffalo, or bison, as being native to the rugged American West and the expansive prairies that carpeted the interior of the continent. But old books tell us that these animals once roamed over much of the South as well. It didn’t take long for wildlife to get pushed out as European settlers rapidly colonized the Atlantic coastal states before moving inwards.

George Catlin, an artist who traveled extensively throughout the United States during the early 1800’s in order to paint and study the Indian tribes, is considered something of an expert regarding buffalo. He noted in his journals that this magnificent animal’s range once extended all the way from the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains. As early as the 1770’s, however, bison were already completely absent from South Carolina. American naturalist William Bartram, in his 1791 book Travels, had this to say of the wildlife he encountered (and failed to encounter) during a journey through the wilds from Savannah to Augusta:

“As for the animal productions, they are the same which originally inhabited this part of North America, except such which have been affrighted away since the invasion of the Europeans. The buffalo (urus) once so very numerous, is not at this day to be seen in this part of the country; there are but few elks, and those only in the Appalachian mountains...Bears, tygers, wolves and wild cats (felis cauda truncate) are numerous enough.”

He includes a footnote to explain that “tyger” is the name applied by locals to the animal which Northerners called panther, and that it is very strong, of a yellowish-brown or clay color, and a “mischievous animal” that preys on calves, young colts, etc.

Nearly a century and half later, native son and naturalist James Henry Rice Jr. would also write about long-lost wildlife in his 1925 book Glories of the Carolina Coast, although he differs from Bartram in saying that early settlers used the word “panther” and not “tyger”:

“In colonial days there were animals in the state which have long become extinct. Wolves hunted in large flocks and it was not uncommon for a hunter to be kept all night in a tree by a pack of hungry wolves. The animal now called elk, but really the wapiti, ranged over most of the state, as did the bison or ‘buffalo.’ The puma was also common and terrified the inhabitants by its size and habit of night prowling, although an animal quite harmless to man. The name given it by early settlers was ‘panther’ and it was firmly believed to waylay travelers, spring on them and eat off their heads, burying the body in leaves!”

The wolves that formally existed here were red wolves (Canis rufus), a species unique to the Southeast that once ranged all the way from Florida to Texas, and possibly as far north as Missouri and New England. Named for its rusty color, this animal is slighter in build than the grey wolf and rarely grows larger than 60 pounds. Over-hunting and habitat loss brought the red wolf to the brink of extinction, until in 1970 there were thought to be only 100 individuals left in small, remnant groups on the Texas and Louisiana coasts. According to an article published by the National Geographic Society, 14 red wolves were taken into captivity by the Fish and Wildlife service in 1970 with the intention of starting a breeding program. In 1980, red wolves were declared extinct in the wild, but following the success of breeding programs, the animals began to be reintroduced to wildlife refuges in North Carolina.

According to the National Geographic article, one segment of the breeding program was located on Bulls Island, South Carolina, part of the Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge located north of Charleston. A call to the refuge headquarters revealed that the official breeding program had been discontinued in 2005, due to lack of funding, as well as the Refuge’s decision to focus resources more on nesting sea turtles. However, the Sewee Visitor and Environmental Education Center on the refuge still has two pair of wolves kept in a one-acre enclosure designed to provide educational and observational opportunities to visitors.

Tricia Lynch, a park ranger at the Cape Romain refuge, said they are hoping that one of the females is pregnant and will give birth to pups. She explained that any offspring would be sent to the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern North Carolina, where wolves have been reintroduced. This refuge is now home to the only wild population of red wolves in the country. While the Bulls Island breeding program was still in existence, 26 wolf pups were born and successfully relocated to Alligator River between the years of 1987 and 2005. This greatly helped efforts to recover the species, and annual counts in North Carolina now report a wild population of between 100 and 130 wolves ranging over 1.7 million protected acres.

Tricia cares for the captive wolves at the Sewee Center. She describes them as shy, elusive creatures that are extremely wary of humans, even those animals that have spent their entire lives in captivity. She says they are also intelligent, social and physically beautiful, and that unlike grey wolves, which hunt in large packs, red wolves travel in small, family units. When asked if she sees the red wolf making a comeback in the Lowcountry, much as the non-native coyotes have begun to establish themselves here, Tricia seemed doubtful.

“Coyotes are adaptable, they will go anywhere,” she said. “I can’t see the red wolf interacting with humans like that, to where they would be in the back yard. I can’t say they won’t ever recover; we don’t know that. But they need area, they need range, they need places to live.”

One species that certainly won’t be coming back is the long-extinct Carolina parakeet, the only species of parrot truly indigenous to the United States. This beautiful little bird was like something you’d see at an exotic pet store: bright green, yellow and red feathers, with just a hint of turquoise iridescence in the wings. While the continent was still in its natural state, this bird lived inside old-growth forests, especially along the banks of rivers. But as more and more land began to be cultivated, the parakeets came out to feed on the abundance of easy grub.

John James Audubon, in his classic 7-volume work Birds of America, wrote a detailed description to accompany his beautiful artistic representation of the Carolina parakeet. He describes how the birds did a service to settlers by eating cockleburs, an annoying plant that covered fields with sticky little burs that stuck to the clothes of the traveler, matted the wool of sheep and tangled the horse’s tail. However, the birds also ate grain and fruits, making them a pest to farmers, therefore:

“...the Parakeets are destroyed in great numbers, for whilst busily engaged in plucking off the fruits or tearing the grain from the stacks, the husbandman approaches them with perfect ease, and commits great slaughter among them. All the survivors rise, shriek, fly round about for a few minutes, and again alight on the very place of most imminent danger. The gun is kept at work; eight or ten, or even twenty, are killed at every discharge. The living birds, as if conscious of the death of their companions, sweep over their bodies, screaming as loud as ever, but still return to the stack to be shot at, until so few remain alive, that the farmer does not consider it worth his while to spend more of his ammunition. I have seen several hundreds destroyed in this manner in the course of a few hours.”

The other motive behind over-hunting was that the parakeets’ spectacularly colored feathers came to be in great demand with hat-makers. This was during the time when women of society prided themselves on the extravagance of their head-coverings, and parakeets ultimately paid the price. These birds were also captured as pets, despite the fact that, as Audubon notes, “when wounded and laid hold of, the Parakeet opens its bill, turns its head to seize and bite, and, if it succeeds, is capable of inflicting a severe wound.” He claimed that they were easily tamed if one frequently immersed them in water, but that they would never learn to speak, no matter how much training was applied. Their only sound was a scream “so disagreeable as to render them at best very indifferent companions.” Audubon concluded that:

“The woods are the habitation best fitted for them, and there the richness of their plumage, their beautiful mode of flight, and even their screams, afford welcome intimation that our darkest forests and most sequestered swamps are not destitute of charms.”

Their charms were to be short-lived however, as by 1939 the Carolina parakeet was officially declared extinct. It was not the only American bird to fall victim to slaughter at the hands of men. Again in Glories of the Carolina Coast, James Henry Rice, Jr. tells of witnessing with his own eyes the savage over-hunting of another bird once common in the Lowcountry, the Spanish curlew:

“Ornithologists give various reasons for the disappearance of the Spanish curlew, but the chief reason was the work of man. A sand reef would be covered with curlews, hundreds, sometimes thousands, collected in a small space. A full company of gunners, many boat loads, would drift down on the birds, timing themselves to arrive when the full moon had raised the tide to the highest and massed the birds together. Then, at a signal, everybody would fire into the flock and give them another volley as the startled birds rose. The sea would be covered with dead birds for a distance all around. Thus went the sickle-bill, as many another has gone.”

To close this series, the Bluffton Breeze would like to take a moment to advocate the protection of our environment and its wildlife. Though we may no longer have the privilege of hunting elk in the prairie-like marshes of the Lowcountry, or seeing the tantalizing flash of red and green feathers as a Carolina parakeet flits through a shadowy forest, we still have many creatures here which dazzle and awe. The bald eagles, American alligators, gray foxes and bottlenose dolphins, to name just a few, inspire us with their graceful presence and natural beauty. Let’s remember that they need and deserve their fair share of habitat, wild lands free from pavement and construction, so that our grandchildren may live to see these wonderful creatures instead of just writing history articles about them!