Illinois’s 72 red wolf records tell a mostly historical story. NatureServe lists the species as SX, presumed extirpated, in the state, meaning there’s no evidence any red wolf still lives here. Globally the picture isn’t much better: this is one of the world’s most endangered canids, IUCN-listed as Critically Endangered, with only a single reintroduced wild population left, in northeastern North Carolina.
The reports that do exist for Illinois cluster loosely around Shawnee National Forest, Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, and the Upper Mississippi River refuge lands, places with the woodland and river-bottom cover a red wolf would once have used. Reports across the record set peak in April, but with a rank this rare, that pattern likely says more about when older surveys and museum specimens were compiled than about any wolf moving through the state today. A genuine, current sighting here would be extraordinary.
