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| Canadian Lynx - Lynx canadensis | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jan 7 2012, 08:18 PM (12,456 Views) | |
| Taipan | Jan 7 2012, 08:18 PM Post #1 |
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Canadian Lynx - Lynx Canadensis![]() Geographic Range Major populations of Canadian lynx, Lynx canadensis, are found throughout Canada, in western Montana, and in nearby parts of Idaho and Washington. There are small populations in New England and Utah and possibly in Oregon, Wyoming and Colorado as well. Habitat Lynx usually live in mature forests with dense undergrowth but can also be found in more open forests, rocky areas or tundra. ![]() Physical Description Mass : 4.50 to 17.30 kg (9.9 to 38.06 lbs) Length : 670 to 1067 mm (26.38 to 42.01 in) The coloration of lynx varies, but is normally yellowish-brown. The upper parts may have a frosted, gray look and the underside may be more buff. Many individuals have dark spots. The tail is quite short and is often ringed and tipped with black. The fur on the body is long and thick. The hair is particularly long on the neck in winter. The triangular ears are tipped with tufts of long black hairs. The paws are quite large and furry, helping to distribute the weight of the animal when moving on snow. Head-body length is between 670 and 1,067 mm and tail length ranges from 50 to 130 mm. Amimals typically weigh between 4.5 and 17.3 kg. On average, males weigh slightly more than females. (Tumlison, 1999) ![]() Reproduction Breeding interval : Lynx can breed once per year. Breeding season : Breeding occurs in January and February. Number of offspring : 1 to 6; avg. 2 Gestation period : 56 to 70 days Time to weaning : 150 days (average) Time to independence :10 months (average) Age at sexual or reproductive maturity (female) :21 months(average) Age at sexual or reproductive maturity (male) : 33 months (average) The mating system of these animals is not reported. However, female home ranges are usually encompassed by the home range of a male, and the home ranges of multiple females may overlap. This distribution, in conjuction with the slight sexual dimorphism, indicate that the species is probably polygynous. Females enter estrus only once per year and raise one litter per year. Estrus lasts 1 to 2 days. Mating in February and March is folowed by a gestation period of from 8 to 10 weeks. Litters typically have 2 or 3 kittens, though the number may range from 1 to 5. Lynx weigh about 200 g at birth. Lactation lasts for 5 months, although kittens eat some meat as early as one month of age. Males do not participate in parental care. Young remain with the mother until the following winter's mating season, and siblings may remain together for a while after separation from the mother. Females reach sexual maturity at 21 months and males at 33 months. Females give birth to their young in fallen logs, stumps, clumps of timber, or similar tangles of roots and branches. This, one assumes, helps to protect the young from potential predators. ![]() All parental care is provided by females. Young are altricial at birth, but have well-developed pelage. Nursing lasts for about 5 months, after which the young eat prey. Mothers may help to educate their young in hunting techniques, and cooperative hunting has been observed. Lifespan/Longevity Longest known lifespan in wild :14.50 years (high) Longest known lifespan in captivity : 26.75 years (high) In the wild, lynx have lived as long as 14.5 years. In captivity, lifespans of 26.75 years have been recorded. ![]() Behavior Territory Size :11 to 300 km^2 Lynx are solitary and seem to be territorial. Although the home ranges of females may overlap, males occupy distinct areas. Male home ranges may include the range of one or more females and their young. Ranges vary in size from 11 to 300 square kilometers. Adults typically avoid each other except during the winter breeding season. Lynx are primarily visual predators but also have well-developed hearing. They hunt mainly at night. Prey are normally stalked to within a few short bounds and then pounced upon, although some lynx will wait in ambush for hours. Females and young sometimes hunt for hares cooperatively by spreading out in a line and moving through relativley open areas. Prey scared up by one animal is often caught by others in the line. This method of hunting can be quite successful and may be important in the education of the young in hunting technique. Activity is almost entirely nocturnal. Lynx den in rough nests under rock ledges, fallen trees or shrubs. Home Range Ranges vary in size from 11 to 300 square kilometers. Communication and Perception Communication and perception are probably similar to that of other cats. In addition to having good vision to facilitate hunting, these animals have excellent hearing. Scents are probably used in marking territories. Tactile communication is likely to occur between mates, as well as between mothers and their offspring. Communication through vocalizations occurs as well. Food Habits Canadian lynx are strictly carnivores. Snowshoe hares are of particular importance in the diet of these cats, and populations of the two are known to fluctuate in linked cycles with periods of about 9.6 years. In these cycles, there is a slight lag between hare and lynx populations. Although in some areas, such as Cape Breton Island, lynx prey exclusively on hares, in other areas they also take rodents, birds and fish. ![]() In the fall and winter, lynx will kill and eat deer and other large ugulates that are weakened by the rutting season. They also utilize carcasses left by human hunters. Canadian lynx only eat meat. Snowshoe hares are a very important food for these cats, and when there are fewer hares to eat, the number of lynx decreases. In some areas, such as Cape Breton Island, lynx eat only hares, but in other areas they also feast on rodents, birds and fish. If they can find a deer that is very weak or sick, lynx will kill and eat it. They also feed off carcasses left by human hunters. Predation Predators of these cats have not been reported. However, one can assume that young kittens are vulnerable to other large carnivores, such as wolves and bears. Ecosystem Roles As predators, Canadian lynx are important in regulating the populations of their prey. This is particularly noticeable in the cycle of populations of lynx and snowshoe hares. Economic Importance for Humans: Negative Canadian lynx are not known to have a negative impact on human economies. Economic Importance for Humans: Positive Canadian lynx have been exploited for their fur since the seventeenth century. With restrictions on trade in furs of large cats in the late 1960's, and subsequent reduction of ocelot and margay populations by fur trappers, increased attention has been focused on the pelts of Canadian lynx. However, it seems that the greatest pressure on populations of lynx remains the size of hare populations, not trappers. Lynx help control populations of small mammals, such as snowshoe hares and voles, that are agricultural or silvicultural pests. Ways that people benefit from these animals: body parts are source of valuable material; controls pest population. Conservation Status IUCN Red List: Least concern; No special status. US Federal List: Threatened . CITES: Appendix II. Lynx are listed in CITES Appendix II, and they are listed as threatened by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and endangered in the state of Michigan. ![]() Other Comments Lynx populations are affected by reductions in hare populations through increased mortality among kittens and reduced pregnancy rates. Indeed, the only direct affect on adults seems to be hunger and not increased mortality. Litters are larger and kittens healthier in years when hare populations are large and food is plentiful. http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Lynx_canadensis.html |
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| Taipan | Jan 10 2012, 02:05 PM Post #2 |
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Canadian lynx in epic journey Published: April 16, 2010 at 5:58 PM DENVER, April 16 (UPI) -- A 9-year-old Canadian lynx has set a world record for making a 1,200 mile trek from Silverton, Colo., to Alberta, Canada, wildlife officials say. "It was an incredible trek," said Gabriela "Gabby" Yates, the lynx project manager at the University of Alberta in Canada. "The fact of where this started, where it ended and the children this lynx had, it is really an incredible story," The Denver Post reported Friday. The male cat, given the scientific identifier BC-03-M-02, was 2 years old when it was captured near Kamloops, British Columbia, in 2003. It was then released for reintroduction into the wild near Creede, Colo., by the state Division of Wildlife on April 16, 2003. During the next four years, the Colorado Division of Wildlife's Tanya Shenk kept tabs on the collared lynx as it fathered two sets of kittens. One set of two born in 2005 and one set of four born in 2006 were born of the same female near Silverton, the Post said. All trace of the male lynx was lost until Jan. 28 of this year when a trapper from Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, Bryan Anger, found BC-03-M-02 dead in his trap line. He had not not set his traps near where Yates was conducting her study of lynx. "When he (Anger) found a radio-collared lynx in his trap line, he was absolutely horrified," Yates recalled. "When he saw the radio collar, he immediately called me. He said, 'I'm so sorry, I've got one of your cats'," Yates said. "I started screaming," said Yates. "I was incredibly excited. I knew right away this was one of the lynx that had been reintroduced in Colorado. I knew this lynx had traveled further than any other lynx had been known to travel." http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2010/04/16/Canadian-lynx-in-epic-journey/UPI-67471271455112/ ![]() Tracking the Elusive Lynx - Smithsonian Magazine ![]() Lynx tracks are spotted near a trap. In the Garnet Mountains of Montana, the lynx is the king of winter. Grizzlies, which rule the wilderness all summer, are asleep. Mountain lions, which sometimes crush lynx skulls out of spite, have followed the deer and elk down into the foothills. But the lynx—with its ultralight frame and tremendous webbed feet—can tread on top of the six-foot snowpack and pursue its singular passion: snowshoe hares, prey that constitutes 96 percent of its winter diet. Which is why a frozen white bunny is lashed to the back of one of our snowmobiles, alongside a deer leg sporting a dainty black hoof. The bright yellow Bombardier Ski-Doos look shocking against the hushed backdrop of snow, shadows and evergreens. Lynx (Lynx canadensis) live on the slopes of these mountains, a part of the Rockies, and the machines are our ticket up. We slide and grind on a winding trail through a forest shaggy with lichen; a bald eagle wheels above, and the piney air is so pure and cold it hurts my nose. “Lean into the mountain,” advises John Squires, the leader of the U.S. Forest Service’s lynx study at the Rocky Mountain Research Station in Missoula. I gladly oblige, as this means leaning away from the sheer cliff on our other side. ![]() Seldom-seen rulers of their wintry domain, lynx may face new threats. The chances that we’ll trap and collar a lynx today are slim. The ghost cats are incredibly scarce in the continental United States, the southern extent of their range. Luckily for Squires and his field technicians, the cats are also helplessly curious. The study’s secret weapon is a trick borrowed from old-time trappers, who hung mirrors from tree branches to attract lynx. The scientists use shiny blank CDs instead, dabbed with beaver scent and suspended with fishing line near chicken-wire traps. The discs are like lynx disco balls, glittering and irresistible, drawing the cats in for a closer look. Scientists also hang grouse wings, which the lynx swat with their mammoth paws, shredding them like flimsy pet store toys. If a lynx is enticed into a trap, the door falls and the animal is left to gnaw the bunny bait, chew the snow packed in the corners and contemplate its folly until the scientists arrive. The lynx is then injected with a sedative from a needle attached to a pole, wrapped in a sleeping bag with plenty of Hot Hands (packets of chemicals that heat up when exposed to the air), pricked for a blood sample that will yield DNA, weighed and measured and, most important, collared with a GPS device and VHF radio transmitter that will record its location every half-hour. “We let the lynx tell us where they go,” Squires says. They’ve trapped 140 animals over the years—84 males and 56 females, which are shrewder and harder to capture yet more essential to the project, because they lead the scientists to springtime dens. As we career up Elevation Mountain, Squires nods at signs in the snow: grouse tracks, footprints of hares. He stops when he comes to a long cat track. ![]() Lynx may prowl hundreds of miles as shown in this map of one male's travels. "Try to appreciate all the challenges that animal confronts," says John Squires. “Mountain lion,” he says after a moment. It’s only the second time he’s seen the lynx’s great enemy this high up in late winter. But the weather has been warm and the snow is only half its usual depth, allowing the lions to infiltrate. “That’s a bad deal for the lynx,” he says. The lynx themselves are nowhere to be found. Trap after trap is empty, the bait nibbled by weasels too light to trip the mechanism. Deer fur from old bait is scattered like gray confetti on the ground. Finally, in the last trap in the series, something stirs—we can see it from the trail. Megan Kosterman and Scott Eggeman, technicians on the project, trudge off to investigate, and Kosterman flashes a triumphant thumbs up. But then she returns with bad news. “It’s just M-120,” she says, disgusted. M-120—beefy, audacious and apparently smart enough to spot a free lunch—is perhaps the world’s least elusive lynx: the scientists catch him several times a year. Because this glutton was probably the only lynx I’d ever get to see, however, I waded into the woods. The creature hunched in a far corner of the cage was more yeti than cat, with a thick beard and ears tufted into savage points. His gray face, frosted with white fur, was the very countenance of winter. He paced on gangly legs, making throaty noises like a goat’s nickering, broth-yellow eyes full of loathing. As we approached, he began hurling himself against the mesh door. “Yup, he knows the drill,” Squires said, yanking it open. The lynx flashed past, his fuzzy rear vanishing into the trees, though he did pause to throw one gloating look over his shoulder. The lynx team hopped back up on the snowmobiles for another tailbone-busting ride: they were off to a new trapline on the next mountain range over, and there was no time to waste. Squires ends the field research every year in mid- to late March, around when grizzlies usually wake up, hungry for an elk calf or other protein feast. Before long the huckleberries would be out, Cassin’s finches and dark-eyed juncos would sing in the trees, glacier lilies would cover the avalanche slopes. Lately, summer has been coming to the mountains earlier than ever. ![]() Though lynx mostly eat snowshoe hares, Squires and colleagues use roadkill to lure the cats. Squires, who has blue eyes, a whittled-down woodsman’s frame and a gliding stride that doesn’t slow as a hill steepens, had never seen a lynx before starting his study in 1997. Prior to joining the Forest Service he had been a raptor specialist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Once, when he was holding a golden eagle he’d caught in a trap, its talon seized Squires by the collar of his denim jacket, close to his jugular vein. A few inches more and Squires would have expired alone in the Wyoming sagebrush. He relates this story with a boyish trilling laugh. Like raptors, lynx also can fly, or so it has sometimes seemed to Squires. During hunts the cats leap so far that trackers have to look hard to spot where they land. Squires has watched a lynx at the top of one tree sail into the branches of another “like a flying squirrel, like Superman—perfect form.” Lynx weigh about 30 pounds, a bit more than an overfed house cat, but their paws are the size of a mountain lion’s, functioning like snowshoes. They inhabit forest where the snow reaches up to the pine boughs, creating dense cover. They spend hours at a time resting in the snow, creating ice-encrusted depressions called daybeds, where they digest meals or scan for fresh prey. When hares are scarce, lynx also eat deer as well as red squirrels, though such small animals often hide or hibernate beneath the snowpack in winter. Hares—whose feet are as outsize as the lynx’s—are among the few on the surface. Sometimes lynx leap into tree wells, depressions at the base of trees where little snow accumulates, hoping to flush a hare. Chases are usually over in a few bounds: the lynx’s feet spread even wider when the cat accelerates, letting it push harder off the snow. The cat may cuff the hare before delivering the fatal bite to the head or neck. Often only the intestines and a pair of long white ears remain. ![]() Squires, shown carrying a sedated female, and his team have trapped 140 lynx. Lynx used to be more widespread in the United States than they are today—nearly half of the states have historical records of them, though some of those animals could have been just passing through. There have been population spikes in the recent past—the 1970s brought a veritable lynx bonanza to Montana and Wyoming, possibly thanks to an overflow of lynx from Canada—but heavy fur trapping likely reduced those numbers. Plus, the habitat that lynx prefer has become fragmented from fires, insect invasions and logging. In 2000, lynx were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Squires began his project in anticipation of the listing, which freed up federal funding for lynx research. At the time, scientists knew almost nothing about the U.S. populations. Montana was thought to be home to about 3,000 animals, but it has become clear that the number is closer to 300. “The stronghold is not a stronghold,” Squires says. “They are much rarer than we thought.” Hundreds more are scattered across Wyoming, Washington, Minnesota and Maine. Wildlife biologists have reintroduced lynx in Colorado, but another reintroduction effort in New York’s Adirondack Mountains fizzled; the animals just could not seem to get a foothold. Bobcats and mountain lions—culinary opportunists not overly dependent on a single prey species—are much more common in the lower 48. In the vast northern boreal forests, lynx are relatively numerous; the population is densest in Alberta, British Columbia and the Yukon, and there are plenty in Alaska. Those lynx are among the most fecund cats in the world, able to double their numbers in a year if conditions are good. Adult females, which have an average life expectancy of 6 to 10 years (the upper limit is 16), can produce two to five kittens per spring. Many yearlings are able to bear offspring, and kitten survival rates are high. The northern lynx population rises and falls according to the snowshoe hare’s boom-and-bust cycle. The hare population grows dramatically when there is plenty of vegetation, then crashes as the food thins out and predators (goshawks, bears, fox, coyotes and other animals besides lynx) become superabundant. The cycle repeats every ten years or so. The other predators can move on to different prey, but of course the lynx, the naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton wrote in 1911, “lives on Rabbits, follows the Rabbits, thinks Rabbits, tastes like Rabbits, increases with them, and on their failure dies of starvation in the unrabbited woods.” Science has borne him out. One study in a remote area of Canada showed that during the peak of the hare cycle, there were 30 lynx per every 40 square miles; at the low point, just three lynx survived. ![]() A dental checkup and an inspection of her snowshoe-like paw help confirm the lynx is healthy. The southern lynx and hare populations, though small, don’t fluctuate as much as those in the north. Because the forests are naturally patchier, the timber harvest is heavier and other predators are more common, hares tend to die off before reaching boom levels. In Montana, the cats are always just eking out a living, with much lower fertility rates. They prowl for hares across huge home ranges of 60 square miles or more (roughly double the typical range size in Canada when the living is easy) and occasionally wander far beyond their own territories, possibly in search of food or mates. Squires kept tabs on one magnificent male that traveled more than 450 miles in the summer of 2001, from the Wyoming Range, south of Jackson, over to West Yellowstone, Montana, and then back again. “Try to appreciate all the challenges that animal confronted in that huge walkabout. Highways, rivers, huge areas,” Squires says. The male starved to death that winter. Of the animals that died while Squires was tracking them, about a third perished from human-related causes, such as poaching or vehicle collisions; another third were killed by other animals (mostly mountain lions); and the rest starved. The lynx’s future depends in part on the climate. A recent analysis of 100 years of data showed that Montana now has fewer frigid days and three times as many scorching ones, and the cold weather ends weeks earlier, while the hot weather begins sooner. The trend is likely the result of human-induced climate change, and the mountains are expected to continue heating up as more greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere. This climate shift could devastate lynx and their favorite prey. To blend in with the ground cover, the hare’s coat changes from brown in summer to snowy white in early winter, a camouflage switch that (in Montana) typically happens in October, as daylight grows dramatically shorter. But hares are now sometimes white against a snowless brown background, possibly making them targets for other predators and leaving fewer for lynx, one of the most specialized carnivores. “Specialization has led to success for them,” says L. Scott Mills, a University of Montana wildlife biologist who studies hares. “But might that specialization become a trap as conditions change?” The lynx’s precarious status makes even slight climate changes worrisome. “It’s surprising to me how consistently low their productivity is over time and how they persist,” Squires says. “They’re living right on the edge.” To follow the cats into the folds of the Rockies, Squires employs a research team of former trappers and the hardiest grad students—men and women who don’t mind camping in snow, harvesting roadkill for bait, hauling supply sleds on cross-country skis and snowshoeing through valleys where the voices of wolves reverberate. In the early days of the study, the scientists retrieved the data-packed GPS collars by treeing lynx with hounds; after a chase across hills and ravines, a luckless technician would don climbing spurs and safety ropes, scale a neighboring tree and shoot a sedation dart at the lynx, a firefighter’s net spread below in case the cat tumbled out. (There was no net for the researcher.) Now that the collars are programmed to fall off automatically every August, the most “aerobic” (Squires’ euphemism for backbreaking) aspect of the research is hunting for kittens in the spring. Thrillingly pretty, with eyes blue as the big Montana sky, the kittens are practically impossible to locate in the deep woods, even with the aid of tracking devices attached to their mothers. But the litters must be found, because they indicate the population’s overall health. Squires’ research has shown time and again how particular lynx are. “Cats are picky and this cat’s pickier than most,” Squires said. They tend to stick to older stands of forest in the winter and venture to younger areas in the summer. In Montana, they almost exclusively colonize portions of woods dominated by Engelmann spruce, with its peeling, fish-scale bark, and sub-alpine fir. They avoid forest that has recently been logged or burned. ![]() A sedated female lynx undergoes a dental checkup. Adult females, which have an average life expectancy of 6 to 10 years, can produce two to five kittens per spring. Such data are instrumental for forest managers, highway planners and everyone else obligated by the Endangered Species Act to protect lynx habitat. The findings have also helped inform the Nature Conservancy’s recent efforts to buy 310,000 acres of Montana mountains, including one of Squires’ longtime study areas, from a timber company, one of the biggest conservation deals in the country’s history. “I knew there were lynx but didn’t appreciate until I started working with John [Squires] the particular importance of these parcels of land for lynx,” says Maria Mantas, the Conservancy’s western Montana director of science. Squires’ goal is to map the lynx’s entire range in the state, combining GPS data from collared cats in the remotest areas with aerial photography and satellite images to identify prime habitat. Using computer models of how climate change is progressing, Squires will predict how the lynx’s forest will change and identify the best management strategies to protect it. The day after our run-in with M-120, the technicians and I drove west three hours across the shortgrass prairie, parallel to the front of the Rockies, to set traps in a rugged unstudied zone along the Teton River, in Lewis and Clark National Forest. The foothills were zigzagged with the trails of bighorn sheep, the high peaks plumed with blowing snow. Gray rock faces grimaced down at us. The vastness of the area and the cunning of our quarry made the task at hand seem suddenly impossible. The grizzlies were “probably” still slumbering, we were assured at the ranger station, but there wasn’t much snow on the ground. We unhitched the snowmobiles from their trailers and eased the machines over melting roads toward a drafty cabin where we spent the night. The next morning, Eggeman and Kosterman zoomed off on their snowmobiles to set the traps in hidden spots off the trail, twisting wire with chapped hands to secure the bait, dangling CDs and filing the trap doors so they fell smoothly. The surrounding snow was full of saucer-size lynx tracks. On our way out of the park, we were flagged down by a man on the side of the road wearing a purple bandanna and a flannel vest. “Whatchya doing up there?” he asked, his eyes sliding over the research truck. “See any lions? Wolverines?” He waggled his eyebrows significantly. “Lynx?” Kosterman didn’t answer. ![]() After more than a decade of studying lynx in their mountain habitat, Squires has found that "the stronghold is not a stronghold. They're much rarer than we though." “I take my dogs here to run cats sometimes,” he confided. Chasing mountain lions is a pastime for some local outdoorsmen, and the dogs can’t typically distinguish between lions—which are legal to hunt and, during certain seasons, kill—and the protected lynx, many of which have been shot over the years, either by accident or on purpose.The scientists worry about what would happen if an unscrupulous hunter stumbled on a trapped lynx. The man in flannel continued to question Kosterman, who said little and regarded him with quiet eyes. There’s no point in learning a lynx’s secrets if you can’t keep them. Back in the garnets the next morning, Squires was delighted: snow had fallen overnight, and the mountains felt muffled and snug. His good mood didn’t last long. When we set out to check the trapline, he saw that a lynx had paced around one trap and then thought better of entering despite the bunny lashed to the side. The cat was a coveted female, judging from the small size of the retreating tracks. “What a drag,” Squires said. “She checked it out and said, ‘Nope.’ Flat-out rejected it!” He sounded like a jilted bridegroom. He turned to the technicians with uncharacteristic sternness: “The hare’s all wadded up—stretch it out so it looks like a hare! We need feathers in that trap. Wings!” Later that day, we drove back hundreds of miles to check the newly set traps in the Lewis and Clark National Forest. They were empty. By lantern light in the cabin that night, Squires talked of shutting down the new trapline. There were too many miles to cover between the Garnet and Lewis and Clark sites, he said. It was too much work for a small crew. In the morning, though, the air was fresh and chilly. The mud-encrusted truck was covered with smudges where deer had licked off road salt in the night. New snow lay smooth as rolled dough, with lynx prints as neat as if stamped with a cookie cutter. Squires was reborn. “Oh, I’d like to trap that cat!” he cried for what must have been the thousandth time that season, blue eyes blazing. The traplines stayed open. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Tracking-the-Elusive-Lynx.html?c=y&page=1# |
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| maker | Dec 13 2014, 04:28 PM Post #3 |
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Apex Predator
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http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2014/canada-lynx-12-10-2014.html http://www.techtimes.com/articles/21972/20141212/trapping-in-northern-maine-shut-down-after-the-deaths-of-2-lynx.htm Edited by maker, Dec 13 2014, 05:24 PM.
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| Taipan | Sep 8 2015, 03:54 PM Post #4 |
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Saving Canada lynx involves re-creating habitat for snowshoe hare Wildlife officials and private landowners are working to provide patches of young spruce-and-fir forests. BY DAVID SHARP THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ![]() Maine is believed to be home to the largest population of Canada lynx in the Lower 48 states, thanks to clear-cutting in the 1970s and 1980s, a forestry practice now restricted. TOWNSHIP 4 RANGE 11 — The kind of clear-cutting that made the woods of Maine an ideal hunting ground for Canada lynx is a thing of the past, but wildlife experts are trying to re-create enough of that habitat to secure the thick-furred cat’s future. With forests maturing and clear-cutting tightly regulated, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and private landowners are working together to avoid a precipitous decline of lynx in the state with the biggest population of them in the contiguous U.S. The goal is to provide patches of young spruce-and-fir forests that look like thickly wooded Christmas tree farms, the preferred habitat for the snowshoe hares on which lynx feed, said forester Scott Joachim. “It’s just a matter of providing the right habitat for their lunch,” he joked. Maine has 500 to more than 1,000 Canada lynx, an unnaturally large population of the tuft-eared felines that is the result of decades of habitat changes tied in large part to a pest infestation. An outbreak of spruce budworm threatened large swaths of forest and prompted massive clear-cutting in the 1970s and ’80s. Thickets of spruce and fir that emerged from the clearings provided an ideal habitat for snowshoe hares. But those forests are now maturing and clear-cutting has fallen off after an outcry over decimated forests led to tightened restrictions in 1989. Declining habitat spells trouble for lynx and its primary prey, which gets its name from shovel-like paws that allow it to glide over deep snow in the winter. “We’re not managing for lynx,” Joachim said. “We’re managing for the habitat that provides the greatest number of snowshoe hares.” If nothing is done, the state could lose up to 60 percent of the snowshoe hare habitat – and 60 percent of its lynx – within 14 years, according to an estimate by the University of Maine. The federal government is compiling the best available science on current threats to Canada lynx and assessing the future viability of the lynx populations in the Lower 48 states. Designations of critical habitat already have been made in parts of Maine, Wyoming, Washington, Montana, Idaho and Minnesota. Information gleaned during the process will be used in determining whether a formal recovery plan is needed for lynx, which were designated a threatened species in 2000, said Jim Zelenak, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Montana. The government and landowners are already taking action. Out West, the government has had success in managing land to create the proper habitat to give lynx a chance because so much land is federally owned. In Maine, where virtually all the vast northern wilderness is privately owned and much of it is managed for logging, the Fish and Wildlife Service is working with four large property owners that together control 600,000 acres of woodlands to create enough habitat to provide foraging for the lynx. Through the Healthy Forest Reserve Program, landowners like Katahdin Forest Management are compensated for developing plans to help lynx and the pine marten, a type of weasel. “You’re trying to produce balsam fir and spruce fir so thick that you can’t walk through it,” said Mark McCollough, an endangered species biologist for the Fish and Wildlife Service. West of Baxter State Park, Katahdin Forest Management is using selective clear-cuts along with cutting of mature trees to create the thick new-growth forest habitat, said president Marcia McKeague. The goal is to create contiguous sections of spruce and fir in the 12- to 35-foot-tall range on some of the 200,000 acres, she said. The state is also managing 22,000 acres owned by the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands for lynx habitat to mitigate losses from a state trapping program, said Joe Wiley, a state wildlife biologist. Forest management techniques are necessary to create a balance of new and old growth habitat because natural pests like spruce budworm and natural disturbances like wildfires or harsh weather aren’t enough to make way for young trees in Maine, said Jennifer Vashon, the state’s lynx biologist. For now, Joachim said, there are plenty of lynx, and he wants to keep it that way. They’re elusive in the summer, but he’s seen about a dozen or so in winter conditions. “They’re not like most critters in the woods that take off the moment they see you,” he said. “They’re the only species that will consistently stop and watch you. They’re curious.” http://www.pressherald.com/2015/09/07/to-keep-lynx-numbers-steady-efforts-aim-to-keep-hares-happy/ |
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2:14 AM Jul 14