The Road to Recovery for the Canada Lynx

The Road to Recovery for the Lynx

By: Aaron Cross

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1. The lynx is a furry medium-sized grey-brown cat mostly found in the taiga of Canada and Alaska. These fuzzy creatures can be distinguished by the black tufts of hair attached to the top of their ears, as well as their short black-tipped tails. The average adult lynx is about 33.5 inches in length, but don’t let their size fool you; although they appear thick and powerful, they only weigh a mere 20 pounds on average.

The lynx population is closely related to the distribution of the boreal forest (taiga) ecosystem. Within their general ecosystem, they thrive in areas with deep snow and a large population of snowshoe hares, the lynx’s primary prey.

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The geography of the lynx’s habitat has been significantly impacted by people and climate change. The boreal forests are constantly faced with: logging, road-building, noise pollution, housing development, resource extraction, and recreation. The snow in these forests have also been impacted by global warming, which is becoming less predictably packed. These factors all contribute to the degradation, fragmentation and even destruction of the lynx’s habitat. The population of the lynx has been going through a steady decline since the 1940’s, and became threateningly low around 2000, when it was recognized by the Endangered Species Act.

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The Canada Lynx was placed on the Endangered Species List on March 24, 2000 as an endangered species, and still remains on it.

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The lynx has a very specific geographic niche, which is one of the main causes for their population decline. They require a large boreal forest, deep snow, and a high population density of snowshoe hares. Due to man-made development and climate change, the boreal forests in Canada and US have faced detrimental changes. The impacts on these forests have fragmented and destroyed the lynx’s habitat, leaving them with little room for protection and dispersal. Climate change has also changed their environment by creating unreliably packed snow that takes away the lynx’s advantage of quick and quiet movements. Since their special predatory skills have been reduced, the doors are wide open for competition from  coyotes and bobcats. Another main cause of decline in these large cats is from hunting. Trappers harvest the lynx  for their valuable soft and thick fur, which can be sold at a high price in the market.

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The main threats to the lynx’s continued existence is lack of connectivity between populations, and destruction of core habitats.

The recovery plan for the lynx is split into four main objectives: 1) retain habitat quality of main core populations. 2) ensure that populations can immigrate and emigrate between core areas. 3) sustain secondary areas for lynx to populate. 4) make sure the threats to lynx’s are addressed. These objectives can be executed by creating management commitments and baseline inventories in core areas, facilitating movements between core areas, and recognizing population and habitat limiting factors. Once all of these objectives are set into action the lynx population will be able to make the slow recovery out of endangerment.

Other Sources:

• http://ecos.fws.gov/docs/recovery_plan/final%20draft%20Lynx%20Recovery%20Outline%209-05.pdf
• (http://ecos.fws.gov/speciesProfile/profile/speciesProfile?spcode=A073)