The Canada lynx on Tuesday was declared a threatened species throughout the contiguous United States, an action that only heightened the controversy over the status of the shy, tawny cat.

The listing worried users of Colorado’s higher-elevation public lands but drew fire from at least one environmental group as offering inadequate safeguards.

"They’re essentially providing it the most minimal protection possible," said Ted Zukoski, attorney for the Boulder-based Land and Water Fund.

The lynx, an elusive, medium-sized predator that dwells in snowy forests, is common in Canada and Alaska but has been declining for decades in the Lower 48 states. Breeding populations are now believed to remain in only three states — Montana, Washington and Maine — out of the 14 it used to inhabit, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which made the decision on the listing.

Colorado’s Division of Wildlife began a lynx-recovery effort last winter, releasing 41 of the animals near Wolf Creek Pass. Another 50 or so are scheduled to be released later this spring.

The listing takes effect 30 days from the ruling. After that time, lynx cannot be trapped or killed, and projects that might disturb their habitat must be reviewed by the Fish and Wildlife Service.

A threatened species, under the Endangered Species Act, is one likely to become endangered throughout all or much of its historic range. An endangered species is considered in danger of extinction.

But there is little difference between the two terms in their effect on land-management decisions, according to Ralph Morgenweck, regional director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Mountain-Prairie Region.

"The difference between ‘threatened’ and ‘endangered’ from the standpoint of how land-management agencies act is generally none," he said Tuesday.

The exception is that with a threatened species, special stipulations can be written into the protections for that animal. With the lynx, a provision allows the killing of captive-bred lynx for furs, he said, and the agency is working on another special rule to allow trappers who accidentally capture a lynx to be exempt from prosecution.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has been under pressure for years from wildlife groups to list the lynx and repeatedly delayed making a ruling. Tuesday’s decision to declare the lynx threatened had been rumored for weeks.

The service found four separate populations of lynx in the contiguous United States: in the Northeast, the Great Lakes, the Northern Rocky Mountains/Cascades, and the Southern Rockies (Colorado and southern Wyoming).

The Northern Rockies/Cascades region, which includes Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, northwestern Wyoming, and Utah, is the most critical to the animals’ survival, the agency found.

But that does not mean the animals in other areas will be managed any differently, Morgenweck said. All projects involving potential lynx habitat now must be reviewed by the service.

"It doesn’t make any difference where the project is," he said. "We’re looking at the impacts of those projects and whether they are severe enough to cause jeopardy to the species across the whole range where it’s listed. It doesn’t matter if the project is in the Cascades or the Southern Rockies.

"Even though we don’t know the value of the Southern Rockies population for recovering the species, we will be protecting those lynx just like we will be those in the Cascades."

But Zukoski said that "just shows what little protection they’ll be providing the ones in the Cascades."

"The key thing is what the listing doesn’t do," he said. "It doesn’t designate any critical habitat in the Southern Rockies. It doesn’t designate the Southern Rockies as a distinct population segment, despite overwhelming evidence that that’s the case and that the population here is critically endangered.

"Essentially it writes off the Southern Rockies habitat."

Zukoski also criticized the service for saying the biggest factor threatening the species is "the inadequacy of existing regulatory mechanisms" concerning lynx on national forests and BLM lands.

"They say there are no threats to the lynx except regulatory problems, and all the Forest Service has to do is tinker with the forest plans," he said.

The U.S. Forest Service has already announced its intention to amend forest-management plans in Colorado and southern Wyoming to take the lynx into consideration.

Any projects that could affect lynx habitat or vegetation and habitat needed by its favorite prey, the snowshoe hare, will be scrutinized. That could include timber harvests, mining, ski-area expansions, cattle-grazing, and snow-compacting forms of recreation such as snowmobiling. Compacted snow allows coyotes and bobcats to compete for food with lynx, whose enormous paws give them a snowshoe-like edge in deep, soft drifts.

Most lynx habitat lies on public lands — 82 percent in the Southern Rockies, according to the service. Few if any private lands are expected to be affected in Montezuma County.

Phil Kemp, forester with the Mancos-Dolores District of the San Juan National Forest, said Wednesday he did not know yet what impacts the listing might have within the forest.

Not many timber sales are planned in the higher-elevation areas considered lynx habitat, he said.

"There’s not a lot that we currently have or that we’re even working on in the spruce-fir type," he said. "The sales at issue are mostly those in aspen where it’s adjacent to the spruce-fir. Some could be considered in or adjacent to lynx-denning or -forage habitat."

Few Forest Service prescribed burns should be affected, he said, because most of those are in ponderosa-pine forests, below lynx habitat in Colorado. The listing could affect higher-elevation "prescribed natural fires" — naturally ignited fires that are sometimes allowed to burn in order to improve forest health — but natural fires that start in spruce-fir tend to be limited and don’t last long, Kemp said.

Grazing also could be affected. There are several higher-elevation mesas within the forest that are regularly grazed by cattle, he said, and some sheep-grazing allotments as well.

But so far it’s unknown how the listing might affect such projects, Kemp emphasized.

County officials have expressed concern that the Fish and Wildlife Service does not have the staff or budget to efficiently review projects, and that proposals will thus be delayed.

Morgenweck called that "a reasonable concern."

"We’ve been asking for more money from Congress," he said. "They give us some, but our consultation and review load is greater than the funds that we get. The speed with which we can do consultations is a concern."

Another unresolved issue is what it will take for the lynx to be considered recovered. That must be decided during the development of a recovery plan, which will take about 2 1/2 years and will include public review, Morgenweck said.