In the mountainous forests of the Southern Rockies, USA, there’s an animal silently stalking its prey. Its huge paws are pressing softly into snow, its long ears are twitching, its golden eyes are locked onto a snowshoe hare. It’s the Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis), which – since 1999 – has been successfully reintroduced into the Southern Rockies.
While this reintroduction has been successful, the lynx are not out of the woods yet. A new study shows that climate change is creating ever-increasing threats to these cats, especially at the southern edge of their range in the Rockies.
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“Lynx are particularly vulnerable to climate change,” Dr John Squires, lead author of the study, tells BBC Wildlife. While the forests that lynx inhabit have been impacted by wildfires and tree-killing insect outbreaks for millennia, climate change is likely to increase both the frequency and the severity of these disturbances – which could have dire consequences for the lynx.
Although the study finds that insects outbreaks are probably going to cause the biggest disturbance to lynx habitat, previous work shows that lynx can continue to live in beetle-affected forests. Scientists are therefore a lot less worried about these outbreaks than they are about wildfires.
When wildfires destroy forests, it generally takes lynx more than 25 years to return to the area. "Wildfires didn’t used to be very common in lynx habitat, but that has drastically changed,” Dr Squires says. Wildfires therefore pose a real and long-term threat to lynx populations.
The study doesn’t just identify the threats to lynx, though; it also lays the foundations for solutions. The scientists suggest that by thinking carefully about land management – particularly how to protect and manage forested areas so that they are more resilient to wildfires – the threats to lynx can be mitigated.
While Dr Squires says he is hopeful that lynx habitat can be protected with the right measures in place, he also stresses how vital it is that the root cause of the increasing threat to lynx – climate change – is tackled.
“Climate change is impacting wildlife globally,” he says. “I'm always hopeful that carbon emissions can be substantially reduced, but current trends are certainly not encouraging.”
His message is clear – if we want to conserve not only lynx, but wildlife across the globe, we must decrease carbon emissions.
Main image: Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis)/Getty
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