In the mid-1980s, however, when the Fish and Wildlife Service asked the state wildlife agencies of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas to investigate possible wolf release sites in their respective states, the wildlife agencies of New Mexico and Arizona agreed to cooperate. Texas Parks and Wildlife, however, did not. As a result, extensive research has been undertaken to determine which areas in Arizona and New Mexico might be suitable wolf habitat. No such studies have been performed in Texas. Because Texas Parks and Wildlife refused to participate in this program, however, no potential release sites in this state have been considered or studied for Mexican wolf suitability despite many environmental groups' and individuals' claim that the Big Bend area of west Texas and northern Coahuila and Chihuahua might be an excellent reintroduction site.
Vegetation also provides the cover that Mexican wolves generally seek out when establishing dens.
Unfortunately, large-scale GIS datasets of the region's vegetation are still unavailable. Therefore, to help me determine the region's suitability for wolves, I have obtained a couple Landsat Thematic Mapper subscenes which cover my area. I have likewise begun teaching myself how to use ENVI, an image processing software package, and have performed some simple, basic analysis on the imagery. The image had already been geo-reference and projected into UT zone 13. Originally I assumed that these band numbers correspond to the first five bands on a typical TM image, with bands 6 and 7 having been omitted.