Bio227-3: The Canada Lynx

Canada Lynx (Lynx Canadensis)

By: Marie Donangelo

http://mentalfloss.com/article/33677/canada-lynx-ghost-cat-north

The Canada Lynx (Lynx Canadensis) is a medium-sized cat with large paws, long legs and a short, black-tipped tail. It’s large furry paws act as snowshoes and help them while hunting. The adult male lynx averages about 22 pounds and females average about 19 pounds. The lynx could be confused with the bobcat, the lynx although is larger than the bobcat, has gray fur, shorter tail and less distinctive spots. The lynx also has distinctive ears. Male territories can be as big as 100 square miles. Females will give birth to 1-4 kittens in the springtime and the kittens will stay by the mother’s side for a year. Lynx need old-growth forests with downed trees to raise their young. The lynx main prey is the snowshoe hare, they have similar habitats that include high elevation forests that have cold snowy winters.

Lynx preying on a snowshoe hare http://thecanadianlynx.weebly.com/niche.html

In the United States the lynx inhibit conifer habitats that support their primary prey, the snowshoe hares. In Northern Canada the populations of lynx alter in response to the snowshoe hare population. The historical and current range of the lynx in the United States is the western Great Lakes, northern and southern Rockies and northern cascades. A lynx can have a home range of about 18-83 miles. The populations can only persist in large boreal forested landscape that has appropriate forest types and snow depths, and most importantly high snowshoe hare densities. The lynx is listed in 14 states that support its habitat and have pervious lynx occurrence;

http://ci.marshfield.wi.us/visitors/wildwood_zoo/canada_lynx.php

Colorado

Idaho

Maine

Michigan

Minnesota

New Hampshire

New York

Oregon

Montana

Utah

Vermont

Washington

Wisconsin

Wyoming

The Canada Lynx was listed on March 24^th 2000 as a threatened species.

The primary factor that caused the lynx tobe listed was the lack of guidance for conservation of lynx and snowshoe hare habitat in National Forest Land and Resource Plans and Bureau of Land Management. The lack of guidance allowed the continued degradation of lynx habitat on Federal lands through timber management and other Federal activities. In the contiguous United States, lynx populations occur in low densities because of limited habitat and limited availability of their primary prey.

Lynx can be legally trapped in Canada and used as a furbearer; this will affect the immigration to the United States which ban be negatively affected if trapping reduced the number of emigrating lynx.

The recovery plans main goal is to address the threats to the lynx so that protection is no longer required and it can be taken off the threatened list.

The recovery plan has 4 main objectives:

Objective 1: Maintain good habitat of sufficient quality to support the long-term persistence of lynx populations within each of the identified core areas.

Objective 2: Ensure the habitat is available to accommodate the long-term persistence of immigration and emigration between the core areas and neighboring populations in Canada and United States.

Objective 3: Ensure habitats in secondary areas remain available for continued occupancy by lynx.

Objective 4: Ensure the threats have been addresses so that lynx populations will persist in the United States for at least 100 years. (Recovery outline: Canada Lynx)

Recovery of the lynx will be achieved when objectives have been reached and lynx populations can persist in core areas.