In December, the Federal Highway Administration announced that the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) had won a Wildlife Crossings Pilot Program grant competition and would receive $25 million to build new wildlife crossing structures on US Route 64 through the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge to help save endangered red wolves from extinction. Multiple groups, including AWI, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Wildlands Network, wrote letters in support of NCDOT’s application and pledged additional funding.
The Trump administration’s freeze on federal funds already appropriated by Congress, however, may turn glad tidings to gut punch. As of mid-March, NCDOT has not received its grant, and it is unclear at this point whether funds will ever arrive.
Vehicle strikes are now the leading cause of red wolf deaths. Six red wolves have been killed on US 64 within the past five years. Most recently, in June 2024, a breeding male was killed on the highway, a loss that led to the deaths of his five young pups. A new study from Wildlands Network (funded in part by AWI) found that, during a four-month period last year, over 2,400 animals were killed by vehicles on US 64, including more than 700 turtles, 700 snakes, 600 amphibians, 100 birds, six river otters, two black bears, and two bobcats. Scuttling this crossing project, therefore, would not only throw a wrench in red wolf recovery efforts, but also sentence many thousands more animals to death by vehicle strike.