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With attendant fanfare and feeding of the media, on Feb. 3 the Colorado Division of Wildlife released five imported Canadian lynx in the San Juan Mountains near Creede.
The cats scampered off into the woods, their big feet easily conveying them across the snow.
Since then, most of the first batch have started to death. The Colorado Division of Wildlife has decided to hold the lynx longer so that they'll be fatter on release, presumably improving their odds on survival.
Animal-rights activists have protested -- animals starve
to death all the time in the wild, they grant, but is it
proper for us to trap them in Canada and Alaska, haul them
to Colorado, then turn them loose to starve? That isn't
exactly letting nature take its course.
Why is Colorado attempting to re-introduce the lynx?
A little natural history seems in order, and I'll draw
on the heavy tome Mammals of Colorado,
published in
1994 by the Denver Museum of Natural History and University
Press of Colorado.
The lynx is about twice the size of a housecat -- 12 to 30 pounds, perhaps a yard long with another 4 inches of tail. It has huge feet for its weight, which enables it to get around in deep snow to hunt snowshoe hares, which can make up 80 percent of its diet. But it will eat just about anything that moves, from grouse to fawns.
Colorado represents the southernmost range of the lynx, and it may never have been common here since the last Ice Age ended 10,000 years ago.
Closely related to the lynx is the bobcat. The book
observes that the bobcat can be difficult to distinguish
from the lynx,
and the skulls of lynx and bobcat
are almost identical.
The bobcat and lynx are in the same genus and the same size. Their diets are similar, though the bobcat doesn't get around well in the snow, so it doesn't consume nearly as many snowshoe hares. Bobcats are not endangered in Colorado -- indeed, there's a hunting season on them.
As nearly as I can tell, if you have bobcats, you wouldn't really need to go out of your way to import lynx unless you're being over-run by snowshoe hares.
If that's the case, I've seen no evidence of it. Not once this winter have I seen a roadkill jackrabbit, or an Australia-like field crowded with snowshoe hares.
The only time I can remember seeing lots of snowshoe hares in Colorado was more than 30 years ago, when my dad and I and some friends would venture to North Park in November for a special late hunting season. Since we were hunting deer, the only wildlife we saw was big-footed jackrabbits.
And of course, the place where the lynx were released was 250 miles south of rabbit-rich North Park and 150 miles from Vail.
Why there, and why bother with re-introducing the lynx at all, given that:
1) There may still be indigenous lynx in the mountains. They're solitary, nocturnal hunters, and could go years without being noticed by humans.
2) With the exception of snowshoe hares, the closely related bobcat does the same job as the lynx.
3) Colorado is not being over-run by snowshoe hares.
4) The lynx is not in danger of extinction. It thrives, although not in Colorado.
The answer lies along Interstate 70, where Vail is proceeding with its ski-area expansion into a zone where Colorado's last known lynx were observed 25 years ago.
Various endangered-species laws might interfere with Vail's plans, but if Colorado had lynx populations elsewhere in the state, then that obstacle to Vail expansion would be removed.
As we all know, our state government delights in assisting needy corporations like Vail Resorts, and when Vail needs something like a bigger highway or some lynx to run around in a distant part of the state, the wheels start to turn.
Thus the lynx trapped in Canada and Alaska have become pawns in a statewide chess game. They get to starve and Vail gets to enhance its bottom line.
Here's a suggestion. The next time anyone feels compelled to capture some predators, tag them with computer chips and then turn them loose in a deep-snow wilderness to fend for themselves until they die of starvation -- catch some Vail executives.
They should make for good TV footage as they're released from their cages in the San Juans, and as they succumb, we will all be able to rejoice in the benefits to Colorado's environment.
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