Between Care and Control: The Patagonian Cougar’s Tale

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article focuses on a rewilding project in Santa Cruz, Argentina, that seeks to restore the Patagonian ecosystem through the active management of species, especially the cougar or puma. Highlighting the role that media technologies play, this work argues that camera traps and satellite collars employed to enact rewilding practices are also concerned with the management of people and their perceptions. Furthermore, the article suggests that the imaginaries sustaining these practices of conservation are predicated on controlling future animal behavior just as they are on preserving it, considering that this rewilding initiative seeks to habituate pumas to the presence of humans so that their bodies can be put to work in the service of ecotourism. In so doing, the modes of futuring enacted through this conservation continue to place wild animals as something to be looked-at, and nature as something that must be sold to be saved.