The Canada lynx once ranged from Alaska across Canada and into many of the northern U.S. states. Today, while tens of thousands of lynx remain in Canada and Alaska, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service can confirm the presence of lynx populations below the border only in Maine, Montana, Washington, and Colorado.

In the nineteenth century, trapping put heavy pressure on the Canada lynx. Now, the cat's survival in the U.S. is jeopardized by habitat destruction. Some timber practices and roads remove the mature forest that the lynx needs for denning and rearing young or cut off the lynx from traveling.

By the early 1990s, the Canada lynx was a clear candidate for Endangered Species Act protection. More than a dozen environmental groups petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list lynx in the lower 48 states. Fish and Wildlife Service regional offices and field biologists supported the petition, but officials in headquarters turned it down.

In 1995, the stakes rose yet higher. Portions of the lynx's habitat were slated for logging when Congress enacted a law that demanded 330 "salvage sales" on national forests. Not only did Congress set logging at an unsustainable level for many forests, it also protected the sales from court appeal by exempting them from the safeguards of environmental laws. The logging industry maintained that this cut was necessary because large numbers of trees had died from disease, fire, and insects, even though Forest Service statistics show little change in tree deaths during the past half century.

Trapped between industry pressure and inconclusive science, again the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declined to list the lynx. Environmental groups took the case to court, where, in March 1997, the judge overruled the decision.

The Endangered Species Act requires listing decisions to be made within a year after a petition is filed, but the agency did not formally propose to list the lynx as threatened in the contiguous United States until July 1998. In March 2000, FWS finally listed the lynx as threatened in the lower 48. Its listing will provide a critical step in conserving the lynx throughout the southern part of its natural range, since federal protection will spur much-needed research on the species, aid in generating funds for lynx efforts, and form the basis for managing forest uses for lynx survival.

Support NWF's conservation efforts by symbolically adopting a Canada Lynx today.