Despite the deaths of 15 of the felines, Colorado’s Canada-lynx recovery effort is proceeding well, Division of Wildlife biologist Scott Wait told the Montezuma County commissioners last week.

"That’s actually a pretty good survival rate and I’m fairly happy with that," Wait said. "Obviously we would choose not to have any mortalities, but you do expect them."

Forty-one of the reclusive, bobcat-like predators were trapped in Alaska and Canada and then released in the southern San Juan Mountains last winter and spring in the first part of a multi-agency effort to restore the species to Colorado. Until the releases, the last confirmed lynx sighting in the state had been at Vail in 1973, when one was clubbed to death illegally.

The Colorado Wildlife Commission at its September meeting approved the release of as many as 50 more lynx in the San Juans this spring, Wait said. The commission will hear an update on the program in January and, if it does not change its mind, the releases will proceed.

Wait said the San Juan Mountains were chosen both for their remoteness and because they have a high density of snowshoe hares, the lynx’s favorite prey.

"The Vail and Leadville area are certainly suitable habitat for lynx, too," Wait said, "but Interstate 70 is a barrier to lynx."

He said biologists also want to release next year’s lynx into the same area as before because they want to optimize the chances of the animals breeding.

"There’s one now near Silverton and one in the Telluride area, a male and a female, and those two will probably meet up again in March" to mate, Wait said. Lynx breed just once a year, in spring, he said. But getting other males and females together may be difficult until more are released.

"We have to get the density up in this one area to have a breeding population," he explained.

Fifteen of the lynx have remained in the San Juans, he said. In most cases they made exploratory forays out of the mountains and then returned.

"I think that’s a very good sign," he said. "Sadly, throughout all this, what the public has heard about is just the mortalities."

The first five lynx to be released all eventually starved, something Wait attributed to human error.

"Lynx experts had told us to quickly put them back out in the wild — not to take any chances on habituating them to humans," Wait said.

So, when the first lynx were captured in British Columbia and transported to Colorado, they were turned loose in February a few days after their arrival, as soon as they appeared healthy.

"At that point nobody in Colorado had ever physically handled a lynx before," Wait said. "Subsequently we noticed that the lynx coming in from the Yukon were 25 to 35 percent heavier than the others. We said, ‘No, the British Columbia lynx were not in good condition. These will be the standard of what good condition is,’ and we changed protocol."

Lynx are now held for approximately three weeks, he said, and fed as much as they want until their weight reaches a plateau.

"Under those protocols, none have starved to death," Wait said.

However, two lynx have been hit and killed by cars — one on U.S. 160, one on I-70 — and a third was killed by being struck by something, quite possibly a car also, near Poncha Pass in late November.

Another four were found dead of unknown causes; their carcasses had been scavenged so that it was not possible to determine the cause of death. Bone-marrow analysis and other tests showed they had been well-fed, however, Wait said.

And three more were shot — one in the San Luis Valley, one north of Dolores, and one in Nebraska. The perpetrator was never caught in the first instance, but a Louisiana hunter pleaded guilty in the second. The third shooting is believed to have been done by a deer hunter, Wait said, but it was impossible to tell which of the many hunters in the area.

Analysis of the stomach contents of the dead lynx showed they’d been eating deer mice, meadow voles, tree squirrels, and jackrabbits in addition to snowshoe hares, Wait said.

Another eight lynx are missing — no one has been able to track their radio signal for two months or more. It’s possible that some have moved beyond tracking range, which is an area extending 75 miles into New Mexico, north to I-70, and west to the Utah border, Wait said.

But some or all may have died, he said. Although their collars emit a mortality signal if the animals quit moving for a length of time, the collars can be damaged by being struck by cars, in which case they might not give off a signal.

When a lynx roams far afield of Colorado, normally it is not recaptured, explained DOW spokesman Todd Malmsbury on Monday.

"There’s two parts of this," he said. "One is the reintroduction of a native species. Research is the other, and research means the animals are going to go where they will."

However, if an animal gets into a situation where it appears it cannot do well, he said, it might be recaptured. In fact, he said, the division was considering going after the lynx in Nebraska, which had first roamed up to Rocky Mountain National Park, then into Wyoming before heading east along some river drainages.

Ironically, however, when the lynx was killed, Malmsbury said, it turned out it had been doing fine.

"It actually weighed more than when we released it," he said. "It was just in excellent condition."

The DOW’s lynx-reintroduction program was begun partly in hopes of thwarting the possible effects that a federal endangered or threatened listing for the species might have.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been considering such a listing, and is to announce its decision on Jan. 8, 2000, a date postponed from earlier this year. It’s possible the lynx will not be listed, Wait said, or that it will be listed as threatened in certain Western and north-central states.

Agricultural and outfitting interests had opposed Colorado’s reintroduction effort, fearing it would mean restrictions on public lands, but the Division of Wildlife argued that there would be much more drastic effects if the state did nothing and the lynx was listed federally. Then, any potential lynx habitat could be restricted from certain uses.

Under the state recovery effort, such measures have been avoided, Wait said.

"By all indications, the lynx are not going to have any impact on anybody’s use in Colorado," Wait said.

John Mumma, director of the DOW, has asked for the lynx not to be listed as threatened in Colorado or, failing that, for this to be designated a biologically distinct population — meaning that the animals could continue to be managed by the state rather than the USFWS.

Wait said he hopes that, whatever happens with the federal listing, the state is able to maintain control of Colorado’s reintroduction effort.

"If they (the USFWS) took over the reintroduction, it would set us back five to seven years," he said.

But the releases will continue this spring, barring any catastrophes, Wait said. Trappers will start catching lynx in British Columbia within the next two weeks and the animals will begin arriving in Colorado in January, he said. They will be kept in a holding site in the San Luis Valley and released in April or May.

Lynx numbers were at a 10-year high in Canada last year, but are starting to decline as the snowshoe-hare population there undergoes a cyclical crash. Whether 50 lynx will even be available for sale to Colorado this year is unknown, Wait said, and it definitely won’t be possible next year.

"This was a real window of opportunity for us," he said.