There’s a lot of talk these days about the supposed high cost of the federal red wolf recovery program. Well, I wanted to figure out just how much the residents of the five-county area red wolf recovery area are paying out of the total red wolf program cost of around $1 million per year.

As of 2014, there were only 105,050 people living in the five counties, out of a total U.S. population of approximately 318,900,000. That means the red wolf recovery area represents 0.00032941 of the total U.S. population, and barring any data to the contrary, one can assume about that much of the U.S. taxpayer base. Multiply that tiny fraction by $1 million and you get $329 per year as the share paid by the residents of Hyde, Dare, Tyrrell, Washington and Beaufort counties combined. But that isn’t per person, that is total! Divide $329 by 105,050 people, and you get the whopping sum of .3 cents per year per person (probably a bit higher per taxpayer, but still). That is your contribution to the red wolf recovery yearly budget (actually it doesn’t matter if you live on the peninsula or not, that is still your per capita share). Find a dime on the ground, and you could use that to pay for your share of the entire 30-year history of the program!

Another useful comparison: according to the data I could find, the average annual expenses of a single McDonald’s restaurant come out to almost exactly $1 million per year. So, the mighty U.S. government is spending about as much as it costs to run a fast-food store to save one of the world’s most endangered species, and some people are complaining that is way too much!

To put this in another way, let’s say you buy a stamp to send a letter to your congressman to complain about the outrageous cost of the red wolf program. You just spent five times as much on the stamp as you would have saved in tax dollars if the red wolf program had never even existed!

Compare that to something that actually costs real money, like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which are projected to cost taxpayers around $5 trillion (or more) when you factor in all of the disability and medical care costs, etc. That works out to $15,678 per person in the USA for the wars, versus one dime for the red wolf program. I can’t tell the readers of this paper how to spend your time (or your money), but you might want to consider this sort of thing when you’re gearing up to complain about government waste.

Ron Sutherland
Durham