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Colorado Should Have Been Considered Critical Habitat for Canada Lynx, Court Says

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A federal judge has ruled that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service erred when it excluded Colorado from critical habitat for the threatened Canada lynx.

In response to a lawsuit by a coalition of environmental groups, the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana ordered Wednesday that the service must reconsider parts of its 2014 final rule regarding the critical-habitat designation. Lynx were once present in Colorado but were extirpated by trapping and habitat loss by the 1970s. Beginning in 1999, the agency now called Colorado Parks and Wildlife reintroduced more than 200 of the secretive, snow-loving predators into the southern San Juan Mountains. More than half of them died, but the remainder established a self-sustaining population. In 2010, Parks and Wildlife declared that all goals for the project had been met, and intensive monitoring of the lynx was ended. In his ruling, U.S. Chief District Judge Dana Christensen said the success of Colorado’s lynx reintroduction undercuts Fish and Wildlife’s contention that the state doesn’t have enough forested habitat with snowshoe hares to support the felines, and the agency must revisit its decision. If parts of Colorado are declared critical habitat, that could affect forest-management decisions and potential projects such as the proposed resort called the Village at Wolf Creek.

Gail Binkly is a career journalist who has worked for the Colorado Springs Gazette and Cortez Journal, and was the editor of the Four Corners Free Press, based in Cortez.
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