Political picture shifting as biologists refine plans
By Gary Gerhardt
News Staff Writer
As 10 lynx struggle to survive in the Rio Grande National Forest and
seven others sit in pens waiting to be freed, controversy is whirling.
That's because over the years, no one has kept track.
"I tried in 1971 to get figures on lynx," said Bob Tully, retired big game manager for the Division of Wildlife. "But there wasn't any. Fur-trapping records didn't differentiate between spotted cats."
Tully said he pored over state newspapers, federal animal damage control records going back to 1937 and state trapping records from the 1930s to the 1950s. All he found was hundreds of reports of "bobcats and lynx cats," but they were used synonymously.
Even in archaeological investigations by the University of Colorado, no skulls of lynx were dug from firepits of the ancients although deer, sheep, elk and other cat skulls were.
There also were no lynx depicted in pictographs in cliff dwellings.
Tully said he once talked to an old trapper in the San Luis Valley who told him he "caught a lynx or two" in the mountains near the valley during the 1920s. Tully felt he was reliable enough to differentiate between the two species.
"I don't think there were many around here," Tully said.
"I think this was a marginal species at the extreme extent of its range. If it had been abundant, there would have been signs of it somewhere."
Long-gusting resentments and rivalries have fanned power struggles from nearly every corner, leaving the contentious lynx reintroduction program in Colorado buffeted by powerful forces.
Among these are:
Looming natural cycles, as lynx populations in Canada and Alaska
approach a period of decline that leaves the Colorado program with a smaller
window of opportunity in which to reintroduce the cats.
"We're not happy about losing those three animals, and no doubt mistakes were made, including possibly misjudging the physical conditions of those cats," said John Seidel, a state wildlife biologist and co-leader of the lynx reintroduction project.
"But we're learning from our mistakes and we're getting more confident that we're on the right track now."
Three of the original four lynx released died of starvation. A fourth, recaptured Thursday, was underweight and hungry, although it had eaten just before capture.
The animals had been released within a few days of being shipped from British Columbia to South Fork on the western edge of the San Luis Valley. Their deaths have created a public outcry to halt the project until adequate research can be conducted.
"We did put them out quickly, but there were a number of factors involved," Seidel said.
Just before the animals arrived in January, the Colorado Cattlemen's Association, Colorado Woolgrowers, Colorado Farm Bureau and Colorado Outfitters Association filed a court suit trying to stop the reintroduction. The groups fear an endangered species would close public lands to grazing and outfitters.
A judge dismissed the action, but Seidel said, "We just won the lawsuit and thought we better put some animals on the ground before there was an appeal or an injunction.
"We felt if lynx were on the ground, there would be less point for an appeal."
One of the most vocal critics of the program is Marc Bekoff, a University of Colorado professor of animal behavior.
"I thing the program should be stopped and they should step back and take a look at what's going on," he said.
"It's not uncommon for solitary and high-strung animals like lynx to be highly physically and psychologically stressed, and like people under stress, they may not eat, or if they do eat, they still may lose weight and die."
He said lynx are neophobic, meaning they are afraid of new things, much like unsociable people when thrown into social situations.
"There is no shame in stopping a project that isn't working," Bekoff said. "But there is a shame in continuing to put animals out there and letting them die without taking the appropriate steps to prevent it."
Not everyone is agrees.
Wildlife Division director John Mumma said biologists knew there would be mortality -- up to 50 percent or more -- among the animals released, but he said the focus must remain on the survivors to ensure a sustainable breeding population.
"These are animals whose lives are dependent on population cycles of snowshoe hares," he said. "As hare numbers drop over the next few years, 90 percent of the lynx will die in Canada and Alaska.
"But they are capable of bouncing back, and the stronger animals survive to continue the species."
Seidel is nervous.
"We have an incredibly small window of opportunity right now," he says. " If we don't bring them this year and next, it will be 10 years before we can try again.
"In 10 years, the entire political, economic and social climate is likely to change and we may never have another chance."
There currently are seven lynx in the South Fork holding facility and another 20 expected soon from Alaska.
But rather than releasing them quickly, biologists are going to hold them in the pens and fatten them until May.
"We may have misjudged the physical conditions of the first four animals after they arrived," he said. "We felt they didn't have much fat but good muscular condition, and we thought that was the way it should be, so we sent them out -- and they died or aren't doing well."
He said they are finding animals held in the pens put on as much as 27 percent of their body weight while in captivity.
"We just released a big 39-pound male with a bad attitude," Seidel said. "When we cleaned his area, we found he cached three of the rabbits we put in for feed because he was full."
In addition to fattening the animals, holding them until May is indicated because that's when snowshoe hare numbers rise. That gives the lynx a better chance to find prey to survive.
They'll need it, if the Alaska Trappers Association is to be believed. The trappers consider Colorado wilderness marginal habitat at best for the cats and opposes the program.
"We just feel it's poor public policy for the state to devote any resources to trapping and exporting animals that are apparently doomed on the other end," said Pete Buist, president of the group.
Animal rights groups oppose the program as well.
"It's tragic," said Gretchen Biggs, an attorney with the Animal Law Center in Boulder. "The odds of these animals surviving were terrible, not because of Mother Nature but because it was a horribly put-together project."
However the controversy ends, the lynx may not have died in vain. More than a dozen other states are considering reintroduction programs, and learning from Colorado's experience may help.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
March 29, 1999