The Lynx

Here is a good article I found about the Lynx and the issues within Colorado.

Group Seeks Larger Lynx Designation

It basically talks about how a bunch of environmental groups are trying to get the Southern Rocky Mountain region to be established as an official Canada Lynx habitat. The FWS (US Fish & Wildlife Service) says however that the areas in southern Colorado are too few and too spread out even though they are historical habitats.
The article then goes on to say that after a reintroduction effort, 218 lynxes have been released in Colorado since 1999, and 116 kittens have since been born. Before that, it was assumed the population had died out in Colorado.
The article ends with a quote that goes:
"This is so important because the lynx is a keystone species, they're an indicator species. That means that if they're not doing well, the whole system isn't functioning," Egan said. "Without the lynx, there's a big piece of this giant puzzle missing."
Not sure exactly what this means... but it sounds important!


I also found this pdf which goes over the issues the Canada lynx faces in Colorado, as well as it's listing, it's history and different management techniques.

Canada Lynx pdf

What I found interesting in this pdf is that in Canada the lynx's prey is mainly the snowshoe hair which is a species that follows regular 10-year cycles of alternating high and low populations, which means that as hair population rise so do lynx populations, but as hair populations decrease so do the lynx's.
It then however goes on to say that in Colorado, the lynx prey base includes other types of rabbits as well as squirrels and other rodents. And biologists suspect that this diversity in the cat's diet may make Colorado populations more stable than those in Canada.