CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Canada Lynx: Denial and Loss

Canada Lynx, US Fish and Wildlife Service.

In a report just released, the Yellowstone to Uintas Connection takes on the failure of the Fish and Wildlife Service and Forest Service to implement management requirements consistent with science and the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The report provides a detailed analysis and critique of agency management and its current Recovery Plan and Critical Habitat Designation. The Forest Service model was used by the Fish and Wildlife Service as the basis for the critical habitat revision. In the Greater Yellowstone Area (GYA) they reduced critical habitat by 88% by ignoring historical lynx occupancy and claiming that little habitat exists. Yet the model shows that some of the best habitats in the Northern and Southern Rockies occur in the GYA. This report illustrates agency deflection around most of the factors that adversely affect Canada lynx , its habitat and prey base. It shows that science has been misapplied in developing recovery plans and critical habitat designations, resulting in vast areas of lynx habitat being omitted from protections. If protected, these areas and their connecting corridors would also maintain other wide-ranging species such as wolverine, grizzly bear and the many species, forests and watersheds that are associated with them.

Canada lynx once occurred throughout the Rocky Mountains. They were listed as Threatened under the ESA in 2000 due to a lack of regulatory mechanisms protecting the species. Forest Plans were so inadequate that their implementation was considered a “taking” of Canada lynx under the ESA. Under the Endangered Species Act, “take” means to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect an endangered species, or attempt to engage in such conduct. This prohibition applies to both purposeful actions and, through regulation, significant habitat modification that actually kills or injures wildlife by disrupting essential behaviors like breeding, feeding, or sheltering. Agency experts on lynx produced conservation assessments and science reviews describing the factors adversely affecting lynx habitat. These included logging, mining, livestock grazing reducing forage for prey species, roads and winter recreation, trapping and shooting, predation, vehicle collisions, highways and private land developments, among others.

In 2007, the Northern Rockies Lynx Management Direction was released by the Forest Service and was intended to be used as the basis of land use plan amendments to provide for protection of lynx habitat. Even though the science used to formulate the NRLMD identified many human actions as adversely affecting lynx habitat, most of those were discounted due to “lack of evidence” even though their own science reports and conservation assessments had identified them as factors adversely affecting lynx habitat. The end result has been that management direction and land use plans are watered down to the point of being almost useless, enabling logging, mining, intensive recreation and high road densities, livestock grazing and other factors affecting lynx habitat and its principal prey, snowshoe hares to go unabated.

The NRLMD was then further limited in its application to apply only to “occupied habitat”, that is, habitat that was occupied at the time of listing in 2000. A national lynx survey that took place just prior to listing found few to no occurrences of lynx across much of its historical range. This omitted large areas that had historical observations and failed to account for the explosive levels of logging, mining, and recreation across the landscape that occurred prior to the........

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