The North Carolina Zoo announces the birth of two endangered American red wolves as part of its American red wolf breeding program. The two female pups were born on Monday, May 4 to parents Taylor (female) and Solo (male). This is the second litter for the Zoo this year, which is the first time for two litters in one season for the Zoo’s breeding program. On April 21, five pups were born at the Zoo to parents Piglet (female) and Jewell (male).

All seven pups are all healthy and doing well.

The newest pups were named in honor of former North Carolina zookeeper Jessi Culbertson, 32, who worked with the red wolves for several years before passing away in 2019 after a courageous battle with cancer.

The pups are named Arrow, in honor of Jessi’s Native American Cherokee heritage, and May, for the month that both Jessi and the puppies share a birthday.

This litter brings the number of red wolves in the Zoo’s breeding program to 27, making it the second-largest pack in the U.S. after Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium in Tacoma, Washington.

The pups are being kept in a quiet, non-public viewing area of the Zoo and have minimal contact with staff and keepers. This allows their mother to raise the pups with the least amount of stress in a natural habitat.

Only 15-20 red wolves remain in the wild, and they’re all in eastern North Carolina.

Susi H. Hamilton, secretary of the N.C. Dept. of Natural and Cultural Resources, lauded the Zoo’s efforts to help this critically endangered species survive.

“It’s really a testament the staff’s dedication, teamwork and passion toward helping one of the most endangered canids in the world,” Hamilton said.

Once common throughout the southeastern United States, the wolves were driven to near extinction during the late 1960s, but the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began an aggressive conservation effort – the American Red Wolf Recovery Program – that led to new ways to track and protect the species.

The Zoo has been part of the American Red Wolf Recovery Program since 1994. With these recent births, the Zoo’s red wolf pack has bred thirteen pups over the past three years and has successfully bred 36 wolves since the program began. Currently, there are about 240 (that number can change daily during the whelping season) red wolves in breeding programs throughout the U.S. Red wolves normally have three to five pups per litter.

The North Carolina Zoo led the successful efforts to have the American red wolf become part of the Association of Zoo and Aquariums SAFE (Saving Species From Extinction) program.

Under this program, the Zoo leads in conserving the species and growing both the population in the wild and the animals under human care. 

AZA SAFE Species programs aim to protect endangered species around the world. For more information, visit https://www.aza.org/aza-safe. 

To learn more about the North Carolina Zoo and our red wolf program please visit www.nczoo.org

With 2.1 million more unemployment claims filed this week despite all U.S. states starting to reopen, WalletHub today released updated rankings for the States Hit Most by Unemployment Claims.

To identify which states’ workforces have been hurt the most by COVID-19, the site compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia based on increases in unemployment claims during the latest week for which we have data (May 18) and overall since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis (March 16). We used this data to rank the most impacted states for both periods.

Increase in North Carolina Unemployment Claims Due to Coronavirus (1=Worst, 25=Avg.):

• 1,167.85% Increase in Unemployment Claims (May 2020 vs May 2019)
  • 43,221 the week of May 18, 2020 vs 3,409 the week of May 20, 2019
  • 9th highest increase in the U.S.
• 1,132.07% Increase in the Number of Unemployment Claims (May 2020 vs January 2020)
  • 43,221 the week of May 18, 2020 vs 3,508 the week of January 1, 2020
  • 5th highest increase in the U.S.
• 3,243.18% Increase in Unemployment Claims Since Pandemic Started
  • 982,456 between the week of March 16, 2020 and the week of May 18, 2020 vs 30,293 between the week of March 18, 2019 and the week of May 20, 2019
  • 7th highest increase in the U.S.

States with the Biggest Increases in Unemployment Claims Due to Coronavirus

Rank 1 = Most Affected.

To view the full report and your state’s rank, please visit:
https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-the-biggest-increase-in-unemployment-due-to-coronavirus/72730/.

Just three months ago, the United States was seeing its longest economic expansion on record, a period of growth that started in 2010 and continued through February 2020.

“Just three months ago, our major worries were whether a looming trade war with China was going to slow the economy down in 2020,” said John Connaughton, Barings Professor of Financial Economics at UNC Charlotte’s Belk College of Business. “For the second quarter of the year, the North Carolina economy, like the U.S. economy, experienced its biggest decline in Gross State Product (GSP) since the Great Depression of the 1930s.”

Connaughton, presenting the quarterly Barings/UNC Charlotte Economic Forecast on Thursday, May 28, offered a few scenarios for the remainder of 2020.

“Going forward from the middle of 2020, the No. 1 question is how long before the economy gets back to its 2019 level and when does the unemployment rate again approach full employment,” Connaughton said.

Given the hit the economy took during the second quarter of 2020, it is likely to take until mid-2022 before Gross Domestic Product (GDP) recovers, he said. The unemployment rate will take even longer, another six to nine months, before it drops below 5%, Connaughton added.

North Carolina GSP
Inflation-adjusted real GSP is expected to decrease by 4.4% over the 2019 level, according to the report. Twelve of North Carolina’s 15 economic sectors are expected to experience output decreases during 2020, with the hospitality and leisure services sector seeing the largest decline, at 34.8%.

Other sectors projected to decrease by over 5% are:

• Other services: -13.4%
• Construction: -8.8%
• Durable goods manufacturing: -7.0%
• Wholesale trade: -6.1%
• Educational and health services: -5.5%

Only the agriculture and mining sector is expected to experience growth in 2020.

State Employment Numbers
By December, seasonally adjusted nonagricultural employment in North Carolina is expected to decrease by 6.5% over the employment level in December 2019, a loss of 300,000 net jobs during the year, according to Connaughton.

Twelve of the state’s 14 nonagricultural sectors of the economy are expected to experience employment decreases during 2020.  The sectors with the largest expected employment decreases in 2020 are:

• Hospitality and leisure services: -25.8%
• Other services: -7.8%
• Retail trade: -7.0%
• Transportation and warehousing: -7.3%
• Manufacturing: -6.0%

According to the report, the North Carolina unemployment rate is expected to peak at 17.0% in May and be around 9.9% by December.

“Going forward, the one takeaway from this 10-year expansion is that the North Carolina growth rate over the period has trailed the U.S. 10-year average growth rate of 2.3%,” Connaughton said. “This is a consideration as we emerge from the COVID-19 shutdown. So, the big question is whether the North Carolina recovery will again be weaker than the U.S. recovery. This year and 2021 will be very interesting and very uncertain years.”

A Look Back
2019 represented the 10th and final year of the economic expansion following the Great Recession, the longest expansion on record since 1854.

“It is very likely that this expansion would have continued through at least 2020 and probably well into 2021,” Connaughton said. “However, we will never know. We will look back on this 10-year expansion as a positive and interesting decade.”

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic forecast was presented in a virtual format for the first time in its nearly 40-year history. The full report is available at belkcollege.uncc.edu/forecast. The complete forecast video will be posted by Friday, May 29. Connaughton will release the next Barings/UNC Charlotte Economic Forecast report on Sept. 23.

Connaughton is considered one of the top economists in North Carolina. He joined the UNC Charlotte faculty in 1978 and has served as director of the quarterly Barings/UNC Charlotte Economic Forecast since 1981.

North Carolina just recorded it’s highest hospitalization rate for the second day in a row due to COVID-19. We also saw a staggering 33 new deaths and 784 new cases over the past 24 hours bringing the total number of COVID-19 cases in our state to 25,412.

The NC Department of Health and Human Services shared the stats this afternoon on social media, as well as additional guidance and links for more information:

This afternoon, the governor and the emergency COVID-19 task force addressed the state to give more details and guidance about the numbers.

“Today is one of our state’s highest days of reported deaths and hospitalizations since this crisis began,” Cooper noted.  “In North Carolina, our case count has continued to go up. We know that one reason for this is increased testing, which is critical to reigniting our economy and keeping people safe. We’ve increased our testing significantly.”

Gov. Cooper and members of the Coronavirus Task Force will give an update at 2:00pm. Watch it live here. https://t.co/Fg0bqawDJg

— Governor Roy Cooper (@NC_Governor) May 28, 2020

Mecklenburg County is now reporting 3,605 total cases and 85 deaths from COVID-19.