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Defenders Magazine
Return of the Missing Lynx
With some help from its friends, a formerly banished cat reclaims its birthright in Colorado
After a five-hour trek across talus slopes and snowfields, Tanya Shenk tops an 11,000-foot peak in southwestern Colorado’s San Juan Mountains. The sky is deep blue but Shenk, a biologist with the Colorado Division of Wildlife, is too anxious to enjoy the weather. She and two colleagues are on a mission to find out what happened to a radio-collared female lynx released three years earlier.
Airplane tracking indicates the cat stopped moving 10 days ago on a north-facing slope just over the summit from where Shenk and her team stand. Since lynx normally travel widely, this collared female is either dead, or she has established a den and given birth. Shenk is ardently hoping for the latter, because as of this date (May 21, 2003) none of the 129 lynx reintroduced to the state during the past four years has reproduced, and many have died.
To make matters worse, Colorado’s ambitious attempt to bring back these small, shy wild cats has been criticized by everyone from livestock owners to loggers to animal rights activists. Even supporters have quietly questioned whether lynx, eliminated from Colorado in the 1970s, can thrive there again. For Shenk, finding kittens would be more than a milestone: It would breathe new life into Colorado’s embattled reintroduction program.
At one time, lynx roamed the boreal forests of Canada and the northern latitudes of the United States, and ranged down the Rocky Mountains as far south as Colorado. Solitary and elusive, lynx weigh between 20 and 40 pounds when fully grown, and are closely related to bobcats. Unlike bobcats, which have spots, lynx have mottled, ashen-gray fur. Keen eyesight and raised, tufted ears allow them to detect prey at great distances. Lynx feed on squirrels, birds and other small prey, but snowshoe hares are the mainstays of their diet. Five-inch-wide paws (the same size as a mountain lion’s) allow these cats to float atop deep snow before pouncing on their prey.
As with many predators, lynx were decimated by logging, agriculture and hunting. Exact population numbers for the secretive cat were difficult to come by, but their disappearance from many areas caused state officials to act. Wisconsin declared lynx endangered in 1972, and Colorado followed suit in 1973. The federal government dragged its feet on national protections, however; it took nearly a decade of legal action by Defenders of Wildlife and other environmental groups to compel the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service finally to list the cat as threatened in 2000 (see “Defending the Lynx,” page 12).
Meantime, officials with the Colorado Division of Wildlife moved forward with an ambitious plan to relocate wild lynx from Canada, where lynx populations are larger, to their former habitat in the rugged and remote San Juan Mountains. Almost as soon as the plan was announced, it encountered opposition. The conservative Mountain States Legal Foundation (former employer of current U.S. Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton) sued to stop the project, arguing—unsuccessfully—that the presence of federally protected cats would harm loggers, ranchers and other industry clients.
Defending the Lynx
Lynx once inhabited as many as two dozen states, thriving in remote, snowy forests that provided cover, prey and denning sites. But as forests were razed and wild cats were trapped for their fur, lynx began to decline. By the early 1970s, their rarity prompted officials in Wisconsin, Colorado and other states to add lynx to state endangered species lists. But the federal government declined to list lynx under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), prompting a series of lawsuits by Defenders and a coalition of other groups starting in 1990. As a result of these suits, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared lynx threatened in March 2000. But the Bush administration has failed to identify and protect critical habitat for the cats, as required under the ESA, prompting additional legal action by Defenders. Also, by allowing continued road-building, logging and other harmful activities in lynx habitat, the administration is failing to comply with the National Forest Management Act (NFMA), which obligates the U.S. Forest Service to keep lynx populations healthy and well-distributed.
In addition to the legal and public relations problems the plan encountered, there were practical obstacles. Chief among these was the lack of a successful model for re-establishing these wild animals. Only one lynx reintroduction had ever been attempted prior to Colorado’s effort: From 1989 to 1991, New York biologists released 88 lynx in the Adirondacks, and all the cats are believed to have perished.
Colorado officials soldiered forward with the reintroduction effort, however. The first batch of Canadian lynx was set loose in the San Juans in February, 1999. This initial attempt was a disaster: four of the first five starved. So biologists changed their approach and let the next batch of lynx fatten in captivity before releasing them, with better results. “From the outset,” Shenk says, “we committed ourselves to intensive monitoring so we could learn the fate of the animals and learn from our mistakes.” By 2001, the death rate for lynx released a year earlier had dropped to just 18 percent.
Although the reintroduced lynx are faring better, there is still no evidence they have borne young as Shenk and her team cross the summit in the San Juan Mountains. So, with great anticipation, the biologists follow signals from the cat’s radio collar, zeroing in on their target down a treacherous slope. At 10,600 feet, they spot her, lynx BC00F8 (the eighth British Columbia female released in 2000), alive and well and lying against a knotted Engelmann spruce. “We waited several minutes, but she wasn’t leaving,” Shenk recalls later, “so we approached to about 10 feet before she moved away.”
The lynx backs off about 25 feet and emits a low growl, her blue-green eyes piercing the researchers like daggers. As Shenk approaches the foot of the tree, she understands why the cat is angry: Two tiny kittens, about a week old, lie asleep on a bed of spruce needles. It’s a momentous occasion, but there’s no time to celebrate. Mother lynx are not known to abandon their kittens, but Shenk must take no chances.
The biologist lifts the kittens into her palm and cradles them as one of her colleagues snaps pictures. She weighs the kittens and checks their fur. Judging from their weight—about 13 ounces each—the kittens are in good health. Using a needle, Shenk inserts a rice-sized electronic tag beneath the skin on the kittens’ backs. Should the kittens die or be captured, the tags will identify them. To Shenk’s relief, the kittens sleep through the entire procedure, and she returns them to their bed of spruce needles. As the team scurries away, Shenk checks her watch. Elapsed time: 11 minutes.
The biologists quickly descend the slope and watch as the mother, to their relief, bounds back to her youngsters. After trudging out of sight, Shenk finally pauses to catch her breath and congratulate team members Grant Merrill and Andy Jennings. “Emotionally, finding those kittens was overwhelming,” recalls Shenk. “They were so darned cute. I will never forget those 11 minutes. It was the high point, the culmination of the entire project.”
When the team descends from the mountains, Shenk radios her superiors at the Division of Wildlife, where news of the kittens spreads quickly through the ranks. “We all felt a sense of elation,” says Scott Wait, the state biologist responsible for acquiring lynx from Canada. “Some champagne was definitely uncorked.”
Four days later, Shenk’s team finds two more kittens at another high-altitude den. On May 31, she discovers a larger den—this time with four kittens. She finds three more on June 10, and June 11 brings three additional kittens. On June 19, Shenk discovers two more kittens. This time, the kits’ eyes are open. “They were feistier,” she says. These kittens, older than the others, also speak: “They made a sound like a chirp.”
In total, Shenk documents 16 kittens during the spring—a major milestone for a project earlier derided as a “waste of money” by one Denver Post columnist. “Colorado was catching a lot of grief early on from naysayers and second-guessers,” says Martin Smith, carnivore biologist for Defenders of Wildlife. “These kitten births prove the need for patience. Reintroductions take time.”
“When I heard about the first litter, I thought it was great news but too early to get overly excited,” says Steve Buskirk, a University of Wyoming zoologist and advisor to the lynx reintroduction program. “When I heard about the second litter, I thought ‘This is confirmatory. Something is happening.’ By the time they got to six litters, I was confident. We’re talking about a pattern of reproduction and births that, if it is accompanied by kitten survival, could lead to a sustainable population.”
In a few places outside of Colorado, lynx are returning without human help. Populations are rising in Washington, Minnesota, Montana and Maine, where biologists have found 63 kittens and 32 adults since discovering their first lynx in 1999. June 2003 was a banner month for Maine’s lynx: biologists found six dens with 26 kittens, “the largest litters we’ve ever seen in Maine,” according to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service official. Conservationists are encouraged. “We are finding lynx in areas where they have not been seen in many years,” says Smith.
Even so, the long-term outlook for the species remains in question. “Not to put a damper on things,” says Rob Edward, director of carnivore restoration for Sinapu, a Colorado-based conservation organization, “but without adequate habitat protections, the prognosis for lynx and other critters that rely on old-growth forest doesn’t look good.”
For now, though, BC00F8 and her offspring are potent symbols of hope. Mother will part ways with her kits this spring and search for another mate. With any luck, her youngsters will thrive, then mate and have their own litters, starting the cycle anew. “If that happens,” Shenk says, “then maybe we are on the way to having a viable, self-sustaining lynx population in the Rockies once again.”
