Even as 34 Canada lynx wait in holding pens for their release into the southern San Juan Mountains, the Montezuma County commissioners are voicing concern over the possibility that the shy, big-footed felines may soon become a federally protected species.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is expected to publish a decision on the lynx’s status Tuesday in the Federal Register. Environmental groups have pushed the agency for years to declare the lynx either endangered or threatened in about 16 of the Lower 48 states.

In a separate action, the U.S. Forest Service, which manages most of the public land considered potential lynx habitat, announced last week that national forests in Colorado and southern Wyoming may be amending their management plans to take the lynx into account.

The agency is preparing an environmental impact statement to amend the plans and is taking public comments on the proposed management changes.

"In a worst-case scenario, everything above 7500 feet could be impacted," said Commission Chairman Gene Story on Monday. Lynx prefer higher-elevation forests that are covered in snow much of the year, as their huge paws give them an advantage in traveling on deep snow.

The commissioners ex-pressed confusion over why Division of Wildlife biologists had told them when the lynx reintroduction was begun last winter that the reintroduction would not mean any additional restrictions on public lands.

"They sat right here and told us it wouldn’t," said Commissioner Kent Lindsay.

But the division’s recovery effort, which put 41 lynx into the mountains near Wolf Creek Pass last year, is an entirely separate action from the possible listing by the Fish and Wildlife Service, said Carla Harper, the county’s assistant federal lands coordinator.

"The reintroduction has nothing to do with the listing," she told the commissioners. "The listing could come regardless of whether the Division of Wildlife was doing anything or not. And once the listing comes, they look at the potential habitat, whether or not the animals are there."

The listing should not affect lands in the lower-elevation pine zone of the national forest, Harper said, but probably would affect projects in mixed-conifer, aspen, and other higher-elevation zones.

If the lynx is listed as endangered or threatened, projects such as timber harvests, prescribed burns and other ground-disturbing activities will have to be reviewed and approved by the Fish and Wildlife Service before they are launched.

In addition, the Forest Service in its management plans will begin considering the effects of activities such as logging, mining, grazing and recreation on lynx habitat and vegetation important to the snowshoe hare, the lynx’s favorite prey.

Activities that compact snow — such as snowmobiling — will be scrutinized because hard snow allows coyotes and bobcats to compete with lynx in high-elevation terrain. A bobcat killed one of the released lynx on Guanella Pass earlier this year.

Harper said the listing and the forest-plan revisions should have few, if any, impact on private lands. She said she and federal lands coordinator Mike Preston would be "working as hard as we can here locally to have the disruptions be minimal."

"We’re hoping there will be common sense used," she said. "We’re not scared of the consultations [with the Fish and Wildlife Service]." The biggest concern will probably be the time needed for approval, she said.

Kevin Essington, director of the Montezuma Land Conservancy, told the commissioners he was living on the Front Range when an endangered-species lissue involving the Preble’s meadow jumping mouse came up.

Although people were nervous about the listing, he said, "in the end, for people who owned land, it didn’t affect them all that much."

Much of the mouse’s habitat was privately owned land, Essington said, and there was widespread fear the listing would bring a halt to development or keep people from owning pet cats.

"People thought it was going to be another spotted owl, but it was business as usual," he said. The agency pursued options such as purchasing critical land rather than imposing major restrictions, he said.

The fact that Colorado has been working to put lynx on the ground in advance of the listing is a plus, according to Joan Friedlander, endangered species program leader for the Rocky Mountain region of the Forest Service.

"I think there’s agreement that having the animals out there was very important in terms of the potential for future de-listing, and in terms of having real information about the animals in real landscapes," she said in a telephone interview from Denver last week.

Until the reintroduction, much of the data about lynx had come from northern areas such as Canada, she said, but now information specific to Colorado is being gathered.

For more than a year, biologists have been studying the lynx’s needs and making specific recommendations on how to ensure its survival, Friedlander said.

"The Forest Service is taking those recommendations and sharing them in a public forum," she said, "so the public can help us decide which, if any, of those should be applied to the forests and what alternatives there could be."

That action is consistent with a potential endangered-species listing, she said.

Friedlander said, although it can be difficult to get species off the endangered list, there is a very real possibility of the lynx being de-listed someday.

"I think certainly all this debate and questioning over whether it should be listed points to the fact that. . . the threats are not as marked as with some other listed species that are highly imperiled," she said.

The lynx decline has been attributed largely to past trapping, she said, and in cases where a species’ problems were the result of human actions rather than habitat loss, the animals have a brighter future. For instance, the bald eagle and peregrine falcon, whose declines were attributable to the use of the insecticide DDT, now have been de-listed.

"If that operating hypothesis is correct, I think we have a real good chance of fairly quickly being able to restore this species," she said. "The very nature of putting animals into this state may well be enough to put them on the road to recovery."

A listing for the lynx shouldn’t change the Division of Wildlife’s ongoing recovery effort, which will put some 50 more cats into the San Juans this spring, said division spokesman Todd Malmsbury.

Malmsbury said he understands farmers’ and ranchers’ concerns about the possible listing. "They have legitimate reasons to question what will happen to traditional uses."

However, he said, the division is not seeking land-use restrictions. "We have not nor do we intend to ask for any habitat for the lynx reintroduction."

Once the listing is published in the Federal Register, there will be a 30-day period before it takes effect, he said, after which there will be some additional permits required for bringing more lynx into Colorado. But that won’t affect the overall recovery effort, he said.

"This is still our project," he said. "The only thing that will change in all this is we’ll probably have a few more permits to sign."

Some national forests in Colorado and southern Wyoming are proposing to modify their management plans to incorporate conservation measures for Canada lynx. National forests specifically involved in the process to amend their forest plans include the San Juan; Rio Grande; Pike and San Isabel; Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre, and Gunnison; Arapaho and Roosevelt; and Medicine Bow and Routt.

The proposed changes are designed to reduce risks to lynx and provide habitat that lynx, and their favorite prey, the snowshoe hare, can thrive in. These conditions include healthy native vegetation, connections between forested landscapes, and the presence of non-packed snow.

The U.S. Forest Service is preparing an environmental impact statement to amend the forest plans, and is asking the public to identify their interests and issues regarding the proposed management changes so they can be considered in the environmental-analysis process.