Colorado Makes Plans for Reintroduction of Lynx

DENVER —  The first of 80 lynx will begin arriving in southwestern Colorado next month in a plan to reintroduce the wild cat to the state after a nearly 25-year absence.

The plan approved Thursday by the Colorado Wildlife Commission will reintroduce lynx to the Weminuche Wilderness, a remote area in the eastern end of the San Juan National Forest.

The commission’s 5-1 decision came less than a month after an environmental group claimed responsibility for fires on Vail Mountain to protest the ski resort’s expansion, which it said would ruin what it claimed was the best lynx habitat in the state.

The Oct. 19 fires destroyed three buildings and damaged four ski lifts. Total damage was estimated at $12 million.

Vail Mountain is about 150 miles north of the Weminuche Wilderness.

Forty lynx will be purchased from trappers in Alaska and in Canada’s British Columbia, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories. They will be flown into the area and driven to the high mountain Weminuche Wilderness in December. The cats can reach a length of more than 3 feet and weigh as much as 40 pounds. They have long yellow-brown to gray fur and tufts in their ears.

If all goes well, another 40 lynx will be added to the area next year.

Critics wonder whether the lynx, rarely found south of the Canadian border, can survive.

Biologist John Seidel, a predator mammal expert for the Colorado Division of Wildlife, said there are no guarantees.

Though he would prefer to get the cats later in the winter, when temperatures are less extreme and the snow depth lower, there is a need to move quickly because the lynx population follows cycling of hare populations, usually about every 10 years.

Lynx populations now are at a maximum.