ONCE upon a time, wolves were believed to be big, bad creatures who carried away little children. They had wicked links with witchcraft and lycanthropy, the transformation of humans to animals. The wolf of folklore possessed hypnotic powers and was a vampire-like bloodsucker.

The 20th century perspective is not far removed from this view. At least 7 wolf subspecies were hunted to extinction in the past 75 years in Europe and America. In the US, settlers in the area between present-day Pennsylvania and Florida and Texas trapped and poisoned red wolves because they sometimes preyed on livestock. By 1970, red wolves seemed doomed.

Ironically enough, it was humans who fought to save the red wolf through captive breeding and awareness campaigns. Experts from the US Fish and Wildlife Service came up with an unusual plan to save the wolves in the '70s.

The first step was to complete the red wolf's extinction in the wild and breed those in captivity for reintroduction in carefully chosen reserves. Of the 400 red wolves captured, only 43 made it to the breeding programme -- the rest turned out to be wolf-coyote crossbreeds. After 17 years of careful breeding, 8 wolves were released in North Carolina. More wolves have since been set free in 3 other sites in South Carolina, Mississippi and Florida. Local support has been an essential part of the programme, with people, including hunters and trappers, "adopting" wolves.

The reputation of wolves is being given a face-lift through education campaigns: permission was recently granted to reintroduce grey wolves, which were starved out of western US, to Yellowstone National Park. And what did it take to get this approval? A recommendation of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, 61 open houses, 22 public hearings, 30 presentations to special interest groups and more than 160,000 comments on the draft environmental impact statement.