Sidebar by Allen Best
Wildlife – October 2005 – Colorado Central Magazine
Reintroduced lynx have more commonly stayed south of Interstate 70. But the epidemic of pine beetles that is now causing large patches of rust-colored trees could become habitat for lynx in another 15 to 20 years.
The question, theorizes Gary Patton, a former wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is whether the areas of devastation are broad enough.
Lynx favor high-elevation spruce and fir forests, where the trees are big enough and far enough apart that things can grow on the forest floor. This, in turn, allows the vegetation that draws snowshoe hare and other species.
In contrast, the more mature stands of lodgepole pine that blanket Grand and Summit counties as well as portions of the upper Eagle Valley tend to be biological deserts. With trees too close together, the canopies admit little sunlight, permitting almost nothing to grow. “It’s just not good wildlife habitat, unless you’re into pine squirrels – and not even then,” says Patton.
The older lodgepole stands are mostly the first growth since major disturbances in the 1880s, a time of major settlement in the Colorado mountains. Ranchers were homesteading, the mines were expanding, and railroads were driving tracks to connect all of this. All needed prodigious amounts of wood.
These once-young forests are now aging, becoming more vulnerable to beetles and parasites. In the Williams Fork Valley, located north of the Eisenhower Tunnel, the devastation is broad – although, from a broader ecological viewpoint, a welcome change, says Patton.
In time, perhaps 15 to 20 years, these regenerating forests will provide – at least for a time – the biological diversity crucial to the survival of lynx and other carnivores.
