The federal government announced in January that it plans to remove the Canada lynx from the Endangered Species list.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently completed an analysis that it says shows the species has recovered, but environmental groups say low population numbers and growing threats to habitat mean the species needs protection now more than ever.
“This whole decision caught us off guard, because all the signs were pointing in one direction, which is that things were getting worse for lynx, especially with the climate change models and studies coming out,” said Matthew Bishop, an attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center. His group has said the announcement from the federal government showed "vicious indifference" toward the big cats.
Lynx are adapted to live in very specific habitats. John Squires is a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Forest Service who has studied the Canada lynx for decades.
“Lynx are a highly specialized carnivore, highly adapted to hunt snowshoe hares during winter in deep snow,” Squires said.
Canada lynx have long legs and massive paws that act like snowshoes in powder. That gives them an advantage over other predators, like coyotes, that can’t move as quickly through deep snow. But when lynx habitat is destroyed, they lose that edge.
These rare wild cats live in remote, dense forests. Much like your average house cat, they can’t be bothered by humans.
“Sometimes they’ll sit there and look at you,” Squires said.
But a lot of human activity actually threatens lynx. Jim Zelenak with the Fish and Wildlife Service said that’s why the Canada lynx was listed as a threatened species in 2000.
"The big concern was with vegetation management or timber harvest," Zelenak said.
There are now rules and systems in place to protect these public forests from too much commercial activity, Zelenak points out, and the Fish and Wildlife Service says this is enough to lift protections on the species.
The report does, however, acknowledge that climate change is a major threat. Warming temperatures could mean less snow. Wildfires are larger and more intense, and bark beetle epidemics destroy large stretches of forest.
“The trajectory right now is, over the long term, decline, but not knowing when that would occur,” Zelenak said.
Scientists estimate that there are only about 2000 individual lynx, which spread across six geographical areas in the lower 48 states. They live in pockets of the northern U.S. and in the high Rockies.
The experts predict that by the end of the century, most of those will be gone. Colorado’s lynx population, for example, has a 50 percent probability of seeing the next century. Those near Yellowstone have a 15 percent chance.
So even as the long-term outlook for lynx is bleak, Zelenak said that the Fish and Wildlife Service can’t rely on uncertain projections.
“There’s just too much uncertainty in the potential impacts, the potential response of lynx to those impacts, and the projections of the experts,” he said.
Instead, the decision to delist is based on what the agency has determined is the “foreseeable future” — the middle of the century, when projections for survival look pretty good.
But wildlife advocates like Bishop say this decision is short-sighted and that there is an obligation to keep native species like lynx part of the ecosystem.
“I don’t think a place is truly wild without those species on the landscape,” Bishop said.
If the Fish and Wildlife Service does delist the lynx, the Western Environmental Law Center and others say they’ll fight it in court.
