Just before the Thanksgiving holiday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service finalized a recovery plan and proposed new critical habitat designations for threatened Canada lynx, including for the first time areas in the southern Rockies. Conservation groups had prevailed in two court cases seeking to compel the Service to take action to aid lynx recovery in this region in support of 218 lynx reintroduced into Colorado from 1999-2006. The proposal seeks to protect lynx habitat increasingly threatened by climate change and exclude areas where the species’ continued survival is unlikely.
“The science and the law support critical habitat protections for lynx in the southern Rockies. It’s what they need to have a fighting chance at survival in the face of our warming climate,” said Matthew Bishop, senior attorney at the Western Environmental Law Center. “We’ve had to push the Fish and Wildlife Service for every inch of progress on Canada lynx recovery efforts, and are hopeful the agency is beginning a new chapter of good-faith recovery efforts for this ecologically significant and iconic wild cat. More work is required and we’d like to see more lands in Montana, Idaho, and Washington’s Kettle Range included, but the additions in the southern Rockies are a welcome change. Should the incoming Trump administration try to claw back these protections in the southern Rockies we won’t hesitate to return to court once again.”
While the critical habitat proposal decreases acreage around Greater Yellowstone, the new designations in the southern Rockies would add protections on 7,679 square miles in Colorado and portions of San Juan County in New Mexico. The Service also designated additional lands for lynx protection in Idaho.
Critical habitat is area designated by the federal government as essential to the survival and recovery of a species protected by the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Once designated, federal agencies must make special efforts to protect critical habitat from damage or destruction. In 2014, the Service designated approximately 38,000 acres of critical habitat for threatened lynx, but chose to exclude the lynx’s entire southern Rocky Mountain range, from south-central Wyoming, throughout Colorado, and into north-central New Mexico. These areas are vital to the iconic cat’s survival and recovery in the western U.S., where lynx currently live in small and sometimes isolated populations.
“Finally, after decades of litigation and political gamesmanship, we are encouraged to see the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service taking meaningful steps to protect the Canada lynx in the western U.S. through a recovery plan and designation of additional critical habitat, including the southern Rockies,” said Lindsay Larris, conservation director at WildEarth Guardians. “The Canada lynx is fighting to survive in the face of climate change and needs its habitat to be protected. This is what the Endangered Species Act requires and we hope this proposed rule is finalized despite changes in the federal government.”
“The lynx is a keystone species in the southern Rockies ecosystem. Once considered extirpated, the lynx is back and reproducing in western Colorado’s forests,” said Peter Hart, legal director at Wilderness Workshop. “Colorado’s high mountains provide increasingly important refugia for lynx as the climate warms. If we want this species to persist and thrive, we need to protect critical habitat here. This proposed rule and recovery plan appear to be a step in the right direction, but we’ll be looking at the rule more closely in the next 60 days and providing detailed feedback to the agency.”
Contacts:
Matthew Bishop, Western Environmental Law Center, 406-324-8011, gro.w1733783496alnre1733783496tsew@1733783496pohsi1733783496b1733783496
Lindsay Larris, WildEarth Guardians, 720-334-7301, gro.1733783496snaid1733783496raugh1733783496traed1733783496liw@s1733783496irral1733783496l1733783496
Peter Hart, Wilderness Workshop, 303-475-4915, gro.p1733783496ohskr1733783496owsse1733783496nredl1733783496iw@re1733783496tep1733783496
Canada lynx background:
Canada lynx, medium-sized members of the feline family, are habitat and prey specialists. Heavily reliant on snowshoe hare, lynx tend to be limited in both population and distribution to areas where hare are sufficiently abundant. Like their preferred prey, lynx are specially adapted to living in mature boreal forests with dense cover and deep snowpack. The species and its habitat are threatened by climate change, logging, development, motorized access, and trapping, which disturb and fragment the landscape, increasing risks to lynx and their prey.
The Service first listed lynx as threatened under the ESA in 2000. However, at that time the Service failed to protect any lynx habitat, impeding the species’ survival and recovery. Lynx habitat received no protection until 2006, and that initial critical habitat designation fell short of meeting the rare cat’s needs and the ESA’s standards. After two additional lawsuits brought by conservationists challenging the Service’s critical habitat designations culminated in 2008 and 2010, a district court in Montana left the agency’s lynx habitat protection in place while remanding it to the Service for improvement. This resulted in the habitat designation that was remanded for improvement again in 2016.
In 2014, the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana also ruled that the Service violated the ESA by failing to prepare a recovery plan for lynx after a more than 12-year delay. The court ordered the Service to complete a recovery plan for lynx or determine that such a plan would not promote the conservation of lynx by January 15, 2018. The Service ultimately determined that a recovery plan would not promote lynx conservation. The groups listed in this statement and others sued and secured an agreement from the Service to abandon its plans to remove endangered species protections for lynx as well as complete a draft recovery plan by a tentative deadline of Dec. 1, 2024.
The Service’s 2017 Species Status Assessment analyzes lynx population centers’ “probably of persistence”—their likelihood of surviving to the year 2100—under its present regulatory framework as follows (map):
- Unit 1: Northern Maine – 50%
- Unit 2: NE Minnesota – 35%
- Unit 3: NW Montana/SE Idaho – 78%
- Unit 4: Washington – 38%
- Unit 5: Greater Yellowstone – 15%
- Unit 6: Western Colorado – 50%
The lynx Species Status Assessment paints a bleak picture for lynx, noting only one geographic unit (Unit 3 – MT and ID) “has a high (78%) probability of supporting resident lynx by 2100” and noting the remaining geographic units “were deemed to have a 50 percent or greater likelihood of functional extirpation…by the end of the century” [SSA at 6].
Studies show species with designated critical habitat under the ESA are more than twice as likely to have increasing populations than those species without. Similarly, species with adequate habitat protection are less likely to suffer declining populations and more likely to be stable. The ESA allows designation of both occupied and unoccupied habitat key to the recovery of listed species, and provides an extra layer of protection especially for animals like lynx that have an obligate relationship with a particular landscape type.
Canada lynx photo for media use (credit: USFWS/Dash Feierabend)
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