OFF THE WALL

Scientist is pulling for Red Wolves as new mascot

We just couldn’t let this stuff go …

Ron Sutherland isn’t much of a football fan, but he has an interest in what Washington’s NFL team chooses as a replacement for its soon-to-be-retired “Redskins” name. The franchise’s decision could affect the future of an endangered species he’s spent a decade of his career studying, writes Scott

Allen of The Washington Post. A chief scientist at the nonprofit Wildlands Network in Durham, N.C., Sutherland is among those in favor of Red Wolves, which has been endorsed by a segment of the team’s fan base. The red wolf is on the brink of going extinct in the wild for a second time and Sutherland suggested the exposure that would come with an NFL team naming itself after the animal could only help its chance of survival.

“It would mean a lot of the country would suddenly hear something about the story of this animal, and that’s what the red wolf needs,” Sutherland said in a phone interview. “You’ve got this incredibly dire conservation going on right now, and people don’t even know about it. I think it would bring recognition to the red wolf.”

If you hadn’t heard of the red wolf before it emerged as a potential replacement name for Washington’s NFL team, or perhaps wondered if it was even a real animal, you’re not alone. There are a lot of people who wish it weren’t.

At the behest of state officials and landowners who opposed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s red wolf reintroduction program in eastern North Carolina, Congress commissioned a nearly $400,000 study in 2018 to determine if red wolves were a distinct species or a genetic hybrid of the coyote, a plentiful member of the canine family not eligible for federal protection under the Endangered Species Act. The evidence of the study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, released in April 2019, supported the classification of the contemporary red wolf as a distinct species, tracing the animal back to ancestors who lived more than 10,000 years ago.

Red wolves were once found from Texas to Florida, throughout the southeast, and up to New York, so it’s likely they once roamed the Washington, D.C., area. They were wiped out along the Atlantic Coast around 1900, but survived along the Gulf Coast and designated an endangered species in 1967. In the late 1970s, as the animals increasingly bred with coyotes, Fish and Wildlife officials captured the last remaining pure bred red wolves in Texas and Louisiana and placed them in zoos in an attempt to resurrect the species.

In 1987, the Fish and Wildlife Service launched the world’s first effort to restore a native top carnivore back to the wild. The agency released three pairs of adult red wolves in the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge on eastern North Carolina’s Albemarle Peninsula, located inland from the Outer Banks.

The red wolf population in the area peaked at more than 150 in 2006, but has since been in decline. Hunters and the Fish and Wildlife Service’s management of the restoration project are both to blame, Sutherland said. While there are now roughly 240 red wolves in captivity, the Fish and Wildlife Service stopped releasing new wolves into the wild in 2015.

Trivia question

On this date in 1980, Johnny Bench broke Yogi Berra’s record for home runs by a catcher. How many did Berra hit as a catcher?

They said it

Fronm RJ Currie of Sportsdeke.com: “Donovan Mcnabb is reportedly trying to get into shape by throwing balls in the ocean. Just like Tim Tebow, only on purpose.”

Trivia answer

Berra hit 314 home runs as a catcher, and 358 overall. Bench hit 327 as a catcher, and 389 overall. Carlton Fisk owns the American League record for homers by a catcher with 351, and Mike Piazza owns the overall mark with 396.