More information on the future of Critical Habitat and expanding the Lynx population in Southern Colorado..............Remember, like with our Wolves in the Great Lakes and Northern Rockies, minimum population targets are just that......MINIMUMS....I read the article below and already see hypocrisy with the U.S Fish and Wildlife folks questioning whether Southern Colorado should qualify as critical habitat.............Guys, the Colorado Division of Wildlife's success re-introducing lynx into this region is proof positive that in fact this part of the State can very well afford the "Cats" a viable set of living conditions...................Lets move forward with the habitat designations!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Are lynx suitable for Southwest Colorado?

State to be part of federal habitat study

By Dale Rodeb

Whether the southern Rockies will qualify as an area to be federally protected as lynx habitat is a question that won't be answered soon.  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announcement this week that it is removing its objections to a plan to study more areas for critical habitat for Canada lynx means that Colorado will be considered.

Proponents of the lynx, reintroduced in Southwest Colorado beginning in 1999, see this as an opportunity to strengthen the population. "We don't know what areas in Colorado are suitable to sustain a lynx population," Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Diane Katzenberger said Tuesday. "We have to see if Southwest Colorado meets the criteria." Neither does the agency have a time line for establishing potential "critical habitat" for lynx, as ordered by a federal judge, Katzenberger said. The agency this week abandoned its appeal of U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy's order issued last summer to reassess areas in Colorado, Montana and Idaho as areas where lynx could thrive.

Colorado was excluded from earlier consideration as a habitat for the lynx, an endangered species under federal law.Among Fish and Wildlife requirements for lynx habitat, Katzenberger said, are forests in northern temperate zones, deep snow and a large population of snowshoe hares, the principal prey of lynx in winter.

The conclusion in September by the Colorado Division of Wildlife that its 11-year-old lynx reintroduction program was a success has no bearing on Fish and Wildlife plans or policies, Katzenberger said. The DOW said its program had reached its goal – a breeding population of lynx in the southern Rockies. Observations found more lynx births than deaths, the agency said. The DOW's reintroduction of lynx started in 1999; from then to 2006, 218 lynx were released, some of them monitored by radio and satellite collars. Some of the lynx were released around Vallecito Reservoir. Lynx reproductive rates varied, with 116 kittens born in 2003-06 and 25 from 2009-10. No documented births were recorded in 2007 and 2008. But DOW biologists said that the disparity in number of births and the two years of no births coincide with reproductive patterns in lynx populations elsewhere. The abundance or lack of snowshoe hare populations plays a major role.

Paige Singer, a staff biologist at the Center for Native Ecosystems, one of four agencies that sued in 2009 to have Colorado considered as a home for lynx, was elated with Molloy's decision. The Fish and Wildlife Service criteria was too stringent, Singer said. The agency demanded a self-sustaining lynx population as evidence of critical habitat. Such a policy runs counter to the Endangered Species Act, which focuses on help in recovering a species in peril. But the DOW success should be a bare minimum, Singer said. "The reintroduction is great, but it doesn't mean that it has to stay at the current level," Singer said.

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