Through this campaign we play an “urgent care” role. Here we focus primarily on relieving whatever threats are driving the most immediately threatened species toward extinction and buying time for the biologists and conservation advocates to craft long-term recovery strategies. Some current priority species we are addressing are Graham’s penstemon in Utah, clay-loving wild buckwheat in Colorado, Canada lynx, and the greenback cutthroat trout. These efforts speak to our core organizational commitment of preventing extinctions. We use of a wide variety of tactics – from crafting administrative appeals, to securing Endangered Species Act protection, to organizing land purchases — to advance conservation of specific species while also promoting the tools for effective conservation more generally.
Our lynx campaign represents an opportunity to restore for future generations a part of our natural heritage we had all but lost.
Spotlight on Canada Lynx
By the end of the twentieth century, habitat degradation and deliberate hunting efforts had completely extirpated Canada lynx populations from Colorado and the rest of the Southern Rocky Mountains. In 1999, the Colorado Division of Wildlife began releasing lynx into the rugged terrain of southwestern Colorado as a means of reintroducing this native wildcat across the region. Biologically-speaking, lynx continue to make great strides toward recovery in the Southern Rockies. Over 100 kittens have now been born in the wild, including second-generation kittens born to wild-born lynx.
The primary stumbling blocks to successful lynx reintroduction continue to be political in nature. Bureaucratic attacks in the program’s early days, political interference in Endangered Species Act decisions, and the Fish and Wildlife Service’s exclusion of Colorado from range-wide lynx critical habitat designation all severely hamper efforts to recover this native wildcat in the Southern Rockies region. To ensure that reintroduction is successful in the long-term and that lynx can thrive in the region, we focus on protecting adequate habitat in the region, especially in Colorado. If we continue to lose key lynx denning habitat, hunting grounds, and linkages between core areas of habitat, all of our efforts to restore this magnificent creature to our wild places will have been for naught.
