The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) last week finalized a recovery plan for Canada lynx, a species listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, and proposed new critical habitat designations to increase federal protections for the winter-adept felines in some areas.
The Daily Montanan reports more than 19,000 square miles across six western states are part of the proposed critical habitat revision, but a large swath of land around the Greater Yellowstone area — nearly 90% of the area’s existing critical habitat — has been removed, including land within Yellowstone Park as well as in Gallatin, Carbon, Park, Stillwater and Sweetgrass counties in Montana.
The long-term recovery plan and revised habitat designations came from settlement agreements stemming from a long series of legal battles between the federal government and environmental groups that alleged not enough was being done to protect populations of the wildcats found in the U.S.
Since its release, scientists defended the recovery plan and new habitat proposal, and conservation groups praised them as a step in the right direction. But the plans, open for comment for the next couple of months, might be dead on arrival under the incoming Trump administration based on actions taken during his previous term to remove federal protections for lynx.
Recovery plans are not regulatory documents, but rather serve to guide management agencies by identifying risks to the species’ survival and outline the “recovery vision, recovery criteria and recovery actions,” that will conserve or improve the six distinct lynx populations.
Meanwhile, the revised critical habitat designations would add protections to more than 7,500 square miles across the southern Rockies in Colorado and New Mexico, while removing much of the designated area in southern Montana and northwest Wyoming. No changes are proposed to critical lynx habitat in Minnesota or Maine.
Critical habitat is an area designated by the federal government as essential to the survival and recovery of a species listed under the ESA. Designated areas require federal agencies to make additional efforts to protect the habitat from damage or destruction.
However, all agency actions that occur in an area where a threatened species is present — even outside of critical habitat — are subject to additional analysis to ensure the actions will not jeopardize the species.
The reason for the removal of the Greater Yellowstone area is that lynx have been almost completely absent from the region over the past decade and the area “does not appear to support a resident breeding population,” according to the proposal.
Meanwhile, populations in the southern Rockies are thriving following a reintroduction effort around the turn of the century. Drawing on new research and habitat modeling, agency biologists said the new designations reflect the best available knowledge of where lynx are present on the landscape.
“We have a much better empirical validated model,” Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Jim Zelenak, who has been the agency’s species lead for Canada lynx for more than a decade, told the Daily Montanan. “Each time we do this we try to err on the side of the species where there’s uncertainty. We’ve done that in the Greater Yellowstone Area in the past where the historical record [of lynx] is questionable …. But the new model shows there’s just not much habitat in the Greater Yellowstone Area that has the physical and biological features lynx need to survive on the landscape.”
Zelenak said recent species distribution models from researchers with the U.S Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station helped refine scientists’ understanding of the landscape features that are necessary for lynx populations to thrive. The cats are adapted to northern climates and just the southern edge of their range dips into the U.S. where specific boreal-like forest features are present. While much of the Yellowstone region has been found to lack those characteristics, the regions in Colorado, as well as new areas in western Montana and northern Idaho were found to better fit a critical habitat designation.
“This is resident lynx telling us what resident lynx need in the lower 48 states,” Zelenak said. “Lynx in the lower 48 are doing better in many regards than they were at the time of listing.”
The proposed critical habitat rule also excludes Tribal Lands and state-managed lands that have existing lynx management plans in place, including on the Flathead Reservation, the Blackfeet Reservation and Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation trust lands.
The Canada lynx was first listed as a threatened species under the ESA in 2000, providing federal protections to help the snow-loving species’ resilience under threats from human activity and climate change. Under President Donald Trump’s first administration, federal officials unsuccessfully sought to revoke the lynx’s threatened listing— indicating that both the recovery plan finalized last week and the proposed habitat rule may be in jeopardy under President-elect Trump’s second term.
“The science and the law support critical habitat protections for lynx in the southern Rockies. It’s what they need to have a fighting chance at survival in the face of our warming climate,” Matthew Bishop, senior attorney at the Western Environmental Law Center, who led the coalition of environmental groups in previous lawsuits, said in a statement. “We’ve had to push the Fish and Wildlife Service for every inch of progress on Canada lynx recovery efforts, and are hopeful the agency is beginning a new chapter of good-faith recovery efforts for this ecologically significant and iconic wild cat. More work is required and we’d like to see more lands in Montana, Idaho, and Washington’s Kettle Range included, but the additions in the southern Rockies are a welcome change. Should the incoming Trump administration try to claw back these protections in the southern Rockies we won’t hesitate to return to court once again.”
The proposed critical habitat rule is open for public comment until Jan. 28, 2025, and the agency is expected to make a final decision by the end of next year.
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