Feds say lynx recovery plan will take four years

In a recently released a court-ordered schedule, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says it will take up to four more years to develop a recovery plan for Canada lynx.

Last month, U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy told FWS to come up with a schedule for completing a recovery plan for endangered Canada lynx within 30 days.

Lynx were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 2000, Molloy noted in his ruling. Fourteen years later, FWS still hasn’t come up with a recovery plan for lynx, which subsist almost entirely on snowshoe hares.

“The Service cannot delay its statutory obligation indefinitely,” Molloy ruled. “At some point, the agency needs to meet the obligations imposed by Congress when it passed the (Endangered Species Act).”

Molloy’s ruling came after four environmental groups, Friends of the Wild Swan, Rocky Mountain Wild, Biodiversity Conservation Alliance and San Juan Citizens Alliance, filed suit in March 2013.

FWS says it will take four years to develop the plan because it doesn’t have the money and staff to start the process this year. The agency said it typically takes 30 months to complete a recovery plan, but because lynx range over a broad area, particularly in Montana, a number of land agencies will need to be consulted.

FWS also claims lynx are likely to recover without a plan. Prior to the lawsuit, the agency considered a recovery plan for lynx as a low priority. FWS ranks each species listed on the Endangered Species Act on a scale from one to 18, with 18 being the lowest priority. Lynx are rated 15.

The main threat to Canada lynx is habitat fragmentation and motor vehicles. A 2012 study of lynx in Montana by biologist John Squires found they avoided landscapes that did not provide cover and they avoided highways.

Squires and his team documented 44 radio-collared lynx with home ranges within a roughly four-mile buffer of two-lane highways. Only 12 of them crossed the highway.

In other regions of the country and the world, a major source of lynx mortality was vehicle collisions, Squires found.

For example, 20 percent of lynx mortalities in reintroduced populations in Colorado were by vehicle collisions. A study of lynx in Germany found that 45 percent of mortalities were by vehicle collisions.