I sampled the eastern portion of the Fort Apache Indian Reservation from June 19 to August 8 in 2008 and from May 6 to June 19 in 2009. I used scat detection dogs to find wolf (Canis lupus baileyi) scat on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation during 2008 and 2009. My population size estimate of the wolf population was 19 individuals (95% CI = 14 - 58; SE = 8.30) during 2008 and 2009. My study also used DNA analyses to obtain an accurate assessment of Mexican wolf diet and, compare prey remains in Mexican gray wolf scat with prey remains in two other sympatric carnivore species (coyote, C. latrans, and puma, Puma concolor). Percent biomass of prey items consumed by Mexican wolves included 89% for elk, 8% for mule deer, and 3% for coyote. Percent biomass of prey items consumed by pumas was 80% for elk, 12% for mule deer, 4% for turkey, and 4% for fox. I included an ethnographic feature to my research. My study showed evidence of shared knowledge about the wolf within Western Apache culture. My data fit the consensus model based upon the large ratio between the first and second eigenvalues. I provided a literature review of how traditional ecological knowledge has enhanced the field of conservation biology but also the challenges of collecting and incorporating it with western science. Lastly, I provide an historical perspective of wolves throughout Arizona, an assessment of their historical abundance, and document a possible mesocarnivore release. Between 1917 and 1964, 506 wolves, 117,601 coyotes, 2,608 mountain lions, 1,327 bears, 19,797 bobcats, and 21 jaguars were killed by PARC agents, bounty hunters, and ranchers as reported in U.S. Bureau of Biological Survey Annual Reports in Arizona. The relationship between the numbers of coyotes and wolves destroyed was investigated using Pearson correlation coefficient. There was a negative correlation between the numbers of wolves and coyotes destroyed in Arizona between 1917 and 1964 (r = -0.40; N = 46; p = 0.01) suggesting a possible mesopredator release of coyotes with the extirpation of the wolf in Arizona.

The use of geospatial technologies, including radio telemetry, GPS collars, and mapping software, has proliferated in wildlife conservation. In addition to being tools for research, though, tracking devices are increasingly used to control animals that have been reintroduced to natural areas. Animals with radio or GPS collars can be tracked, and when considered necessary, trapped and relocated or removed to captivity, a common practice in projects to reintroduce and conserve endangered carnivores. The assumption is that such actions will help to defuse conflicts over wildlife between wildlife managers and land users. Conservation has come to mean surveillance and control, a situation recently made possible by technology. This dissertation examines the role of geospatial technology in conservation through an examination of the Mexican Wolf Reintroduction Project taking place in Arizona and New Mexico. Major findings include: 1. Policies to monitor and control Mexican wolves represent a deferral of the struggle over priority uses of public lands; 2. State and local government agencies seized on the discourse of adaptive management to gain control over the reintroduction project and expand their institutional authority. Rather than a practice of "learning by doing" and collaboration, however, the adaptive management program that was implemented only operated smoothly when it held together a prior political consensus and fell apart when external factors worked to dissolve that consensus; 3. The policies of controlling "problem wolves" rest on a series of assumptions about human and wolf behavior that are unsubstantiated and likely false; 4. The embodied production of geospatial data about Mexican wolves is erased in project-authored maps, which privilege a partial perspective on Mexican wolf distribution and territory; and 5. The practices of Mexican wolf monitoring and control are best understood as political technologies of governance that constitute Mexican wolves as individualized, domesticated and, I argue, racialized subjects. The policies and practices governing the Mexican wolf reintroduction project, this dissertation shows, have relied on technological surveillance and control, with complex and contradictory results for people-wolf relations and the politics of conservation.