Today in a news release the US Fish and Wildlife Service announced revisions to both it's critical habitat component as well as it's contiguous range portion of it's listing of the Canada Lynx.
The Distinct Population Segment now includes all 48 states. (at some time I'd expect this to include Canada).
It's the Critical Habitat area that I suspect will make the fur fly in some quarters.
In revising the critical habitat designation, Service biologists used the best available science to determine which habitats contain the features needed to support lynx populations and which are essential to the conservation of lynx in the contiguous United States. The final critical habitat designation totals 38,954 square miles in five units: northern Maine, northeastern Minnesota, northwestern Montana and northeastern Idaho, north-central Washington, and the Greater Yellowstone area of southwestern Montana and northwestern Wyoming. The Service concluded that areas naturally occupied by lynx populations at the time lynx were listed under the ESA are sufficient to conserve the population. Therefore, the critical habitat designation does not include areas not occupied by lynx at the time of listing. It also does not include the Southern Rocky Mountains, which currently host a lynx population that was introduced into Colorado between 1999 and 2006.
I'm glad the FWS is coming round to reality, not sure but it might well be too late for the changes probably coming down the pike in the not too distant future. A case of too little too late.
http://www.fws.gov/...
Wiki
IUCN