Eighteen national forests across the West are adopting “management direction” to protect the Canada lynx. I got a copy of this decision on Friday. The maps shows the “core” lynx habitat to be pretty much the same as the Greater Yellowstone grizzly bear and Northern Continental Divide grizzly bear habitat.
Except for two tiny areas, Idaho is classified as “secondary” or “peripheral habitat,” although the map shows huge areas on Idaho national forests that are “unoccupied lynx habitat,” which is a bit puzzling to me.
Here is the story in the Jackson Hole News and Guide. Lynx decision. By Cory Hatch.
The major impacts on human use will be on the type and areas where forest thinning takes places and a prohibition of new snowmobile routes (but not on open snowmobiling). Packed snowmobile trails give a winter advantage to coyotes and bobcats, animals that have relatively smaller feet than lynx.
Ralph Maughan
Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He has been a Western Watersheds Project Board Member off and on for many years, and also its President. For many years he produced Ralph Maughan's Wolf Report. He was a founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. He and Jackie Johnson Maughan wrote three editions of "Hiking Idaho." He also wrote "Beyond the Tetons" and "Backpacking Wyoming's Teton and Washakie Wilderness." He created and is the administrator of The Wildlife News.
