Brief by Allen Best
Wildlife – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
It’s springtime in the Rockies, and wildlife researchers have found evidence of “catting around” in the woods. But will Canada lynx kittens come of it? That’s the unknown.
“We don’t have absolute proof that they have been breeding, but all the circumstantial evidence points to it,” said Tanya Shenk, wildlife researcher for the Colorado Division of Wildlife.
Dreamy eyes? Unusually long lunch hours? Disheveled ear tufts?
Nope, but because the lynx still have radio collars that allow monitoring of their whereabouts, researchers know that seven or eight lynx pairs have consorted. Lynx don’t consort except in mating season, which begins in mid-March and continues for about a month.
In addition, copulation beds have been found.
But none of this adds up to breeding itself, and that evidence — lynx kittens — won’t arrive until mid-May to mid-June. Gestation is 73 days. If kittens are born, they will be helpless for the first month, which means that the mothers will likewise be immobile. When those radio collars start indicating stationary mothers, that will be the clue to researchers to go into the woods to see for themselves.
This interest in feisty felines is hardly prurient. One million dollars has been invested in the program that essentially bets on whether these cats beget more cats. Convinced that Colorado’s lynx population had either disappeared al to gether or was too small to reproduce, state wildlife authorities released 96 lynx into the San Juan Mountains in 1999 and 2000.
Mortality was expected, and it has occurred, initially at a greater rate than wildlife researchers had hoped. Altogether, 40 of the 96 initial lynx are known to be dead, the victims of starvation, roadkill, shootings, the plague or unknown causes. That leaves 56 possible lynx in Colorado.
Of those 56, researchers continue to track 39. Some have cached portions of snowshoe hare, evidence that they have been eating well, while also occasionally preying on red squirrels and pine martens. One male lynx managed to kill at least one coyote.
But even if there is sufficient food for the lynx, say biologists, the population will not survive unless reproduction begins, additional lynx are transplanted into Colorado, or both. One of the problems of reproduction is that lynx are such far-ranging animals, and most of them are in the topographically rugged San Juan Mountains. There is no Yahoo Personals website to connect lonely-hearted lynx.
Most of the lynx being monitored are in the area from New Mexico north to Gunnison, and from Monarch Pass west to Taylor Mesa. A few are as far north as Interstate 70, but none are now north of I-70.
–Allen Best