Watch: Two red wolves released into wild

The Red Wolf Recovery Program has released two wolves into a conservation area in North Carolina. The pair are the first of 10 that officials plan to release on the Albemarle Peninsula in an area that includes the Alligator River and Pocosin Lakes national wildlife refuges. The two wolves—Female 2272, from Zoo Knoxville, and Male 2141, from the Western North Carolina Nature Center—are part of a recovery effort meant to return the endangered red wolf (Canis rufus) to the southeastern U.S.

“As tentative as those first few steps looked, these red wolves are now out on the landscape being monitored as closely as possible by Fish and Wildlife Service staff as they begin their life in the wild,” the recovery program wrote on Facebook.

Read more at The Hill and watch the video of the release below.