From "The Wild Bunch"
The Lynx
Have you seen North America’s snow cat? If so, you’re one of the lucky few, for to see a Canada lynx in the wild, a person must be doubly lucky. That’s because the lynx is both very shy, and very rare. All wild cats are silent and reclusive, but the number of lynx in our forests is dwindling. As recently as 1973, 300 lynx per season were trapped in Montana. Today, their numbers have fallen to the point that the Montana Wildlife Commission set the quota for trapping lynx at only two animals per season statewide. The lynx has declined to the point where it should be listed as threatened in the Lower 48 states.
For several years, conservation groups have been trying to get the federal government to give the lynx increased protection to help recover the species. So far, the efforts have not resulted in any added protections for the lynx.
To understand the lynx, and the problems it faces, it helps to know something about how it’s made, its habitat, and one other animal – the snowshoe hare.
The lynx weighs between 15 and 25 pounds, and has a bobbed tail and tufted ears. A close relation to the bobcat, the lynx has thicker, grayer fur, a larger facial ruff, and longer ear tufts. The biggest physical differences between the two animals are the longer legs and much larger feet of the lynx. Lynx tend to be found more in the higher, snowier parts of the continent, while bobcats dominate the lowlands. The lynx’s paws allow it to survive where bobcats cannot. Lynx paws are about three and a half inches wide and long – twice the size of a bobcat’s and nearly as large as those of a mountain lion, an animal three to six times as large as the lynx! The paws are webbed between the toes, and covered with fur, and with these "snowshoes" at the end of their long legs, the lynx is equipped to pursue the animal that is at the center of its universe – the snowshoe hare. Depending on the season, snowshoe hare make up 60 - 90% of the lynx’s diet.
Snowshoe hare may be a lynx’s favorite lunch, but it’s a lunch well-equipped by camouflage and caution to hide itself well, and if flushed out, to get away. If the lynx hasn’t caught a hare after 20-50 yards, it usually just gives up. Most of the time a lynx chases a snowshoe hare, the hare gets away.
Lynx sometimes use another cat strategy, and will lie in ambush near a concentration of hare trails, waiting for their prey to hop by. Occasionally, females with kittens hunt in cooperation to flush out hares, and chase them together.
But before a lynx can chase a snowshoe hare, it must first detect it. Lynx have an acute sense of hearing, which may be aided by the tufts on their ears working like small antennae. Lynx can detect tiny differences in light intensity, making it possible for them to distinguish the form of a white hare, on white snow, even at dusk.
Because they specialize so much on the snowshoe hare, lynx populations are hitched to those of their prey. In Canada and Alaska, snowshoe hare populations fluctuate wildly in a ten year cycle, as the rabbits increase in numbers, and then go through a severe population crash. When snowshoe hare populations are low, lynx have trouble surviving, and reproduce hardly at all – they are perched just on the edge of not being able to survive. Almost any amount of added mortality can wipe out a lynx population at this stage.
In the western United States, snowshoe hare are at the southern edge of their distribution, and their populations don’t go up and down, like they do in Canada and Alaska. Instead, the populations stay at what is essentially a permanent low. This means that the lynx populations in the United States are always vulnerable to additional mortality from trapping and habitat loss.
Lynx numbers in the Lower 48 states began to decline in the 1890s, and had crashed by the 1970s. It may be that during the 1960s and seventies the price for lynx furs rose at the same time that snowmobiles and an increased forest road network gave trappers access to much of the lynx’s habitat. Or the crash may have been a natural one, made worse by overtrapping and other unknown factors.
Habitat loss is now the major concern for lynx survival. For denning and raising their young, lynx need stands of mature trees. A forest floor with lots of downed logs and stumps, which can take hundreds of years to develop naturally, provides cover for the kittens as they rest and play. Lynx also need patches of young forest because that’s where snowshoe hares do best, especially during the winter. Hares need food above the snow – mostly made up of shrubs and seedlings tall enough to extend through the snow surface, but not too tall for the hares to reach.
Ideal lynx habitat is a mosaic of old forest for denning, young forest for hunting, and corridors of forest that provide adequate cover for the lynx to feel safe as it travels through its territory. In the past, periodic outbreaks of insects, blowdowns, and forest fires produced a healthy mixture of forest stages that were beneficial to the lynx.
Human-style disturbances which open up the forest are less beneficial. Even when hunting in a young forest, lynx prefer some amount of cover, and they typically won’t cross openings more than 300 feet across. Clearcuts, and the replanted forest that eventually grows back, not only create large gaps in the woods, but the regrown forest lacks the diversity the lynx needs to find both denning and good snowshoe hare hunting opportunities
The chances of any of us actually seeing a lynx in the wild are remote. But if we want to make sure that this extraordinary cat with the snowshoe feet survives to help make our northern woods complete, then we must attend to the integrity of the forests where it lives.
We must address the ways in which we humans affect the forests where the lynx still survives. If we do not, we risk turning the snow cat of the Lower 48 states that people seldom see, into the ghost cat of the Lower 48 states that no one will ever even be able to dream of seeing. The decisions are ours to make.
lynx | forest | slideshows
