Killing for coexistence : the bio- and necro-political ecology of wolf conservation and management in Washington State

The state of Washington, USA has been rocked by conflict over wolves, which have recently returned to rural landscapes after their eradication nearly a century ago. While conservationists celebrate the rewilding of ecosystems, ranchers bemoan losing livestock to dangerous predators, and state officials struggle to develop a wolf management policy that will please all parties. Many stakeholders share goals of "reducing human-wolf conflict" and promoting "coexistence," but the intensity of human conflict over how to manage the wolf population - especially when that management includes killing some individuals - demonstrates that there is little consensus about what coexistence means. Examining this landscape of controversy and conflict, I conceptualize wolf conservation as not merely a technical problem for scientists to solve, but reflective of deep-seated cultural, political, and economic differences. This dissertation is thus a critical examination of the sociopolitical norms, discourses, and processes that shape management of wolves as they (re)colonize territory, moving into landscapes where they enter new, often violent relations with human societies. It advances the geographic and interdisciplinary study of conservation as a social practice, engaging with perspectives from conservation social sciences including critical (human and physical) geography, political ecology, science and technology studies, animal/multispecies geography, human dimensions of wildlife management, human-wildlife conflict studies, and related work in wildlife ecology. It is the product of a multi-year, qualitative, ethnographic study of the entangled discourses and practices of wolf management in Washington state, with a particular emphasis on the ongoing controversy over lethal management. Arguing that the key barriers to mitigating wolf-livestock conflict are often not technical but social, I demonstrate how targeted killing of wolves that prey on livestock is used as a tool for the management of both social and ecological dynamics. I thus examine how emblematically "wild" animals are produced by and through conservation practices, and deeply shaped by human cultural, political, and economic systems. This analysis has significant impacts and implications for conservation practice and social science beyond the wolf conflict, raising important questions about the meaning of conservation and environmentalism in a world increasingly shaped by the actions of humans.