Letter from Virginia McConnell Simmons
Wildlife – November 2005 – Colorado Central Magazine
Editors:
As one of the people who believe that the architects of Colorado’s lynx recovery effort are “scientists run amok,” as Allen Best describes our feelings about the program in his article in your October 2005 issue, it appears to me that they are throwing lynx against a wall in hopes that something will stick. Unless my math is wrong, not much has stuck.
Mr. Best did not give the total number of lynx that have been released in Colorado, but the Colorado Division of Wildlife reported in September 2004 that the total between 1999 and 2004 was 166. Altogether, 101 kittens were born, not counting deaths. If my addition is correct, one might have hoped that there would be a total of 267 lynx going into spring 2005, but Mr. Best says that the total population of lynx, including surviving kittens, is now 169. Recognizing the inevitability of some mortality, it is disappointing (to put it mildly) that the total increase of lynx in Colorado since the program began is 3. How many lynx should be thrown against the wall to yield a total of 3?
I fail to see how “wildlife biologists are realizing their highest hopes,” unless they had next to no hope for the success of their program, a program which, as Mr. Best says, has cost $3 million since 1997. As a wildlife lover, I would say that the project is realizing my worst fears.
Virginia McConnell Simmons
Del Norte