Tracking the snow cat: hot on the trail of the lynx—the northern woods' most secretive predator - Cover Story

Sierra, March-April, 2003 by Kim Todd

It's been raining off and on all morning, leaving the grass slick, the roads pitted with muddy pools, and the sky churning with sunshine and shadow. It's spring in western Montana; the rivers are running high and the newspapers are running stories of capsized canoes and dogs washed away. Spots of snow still lurk on northern slopes while glacial lilies unfurl in patches of sunlight. And somewhere in the hills of the Seeley-Swan Valley, a Canada lynx curls in her den, watching over her two-week-old kittens.

John Squires, a research wildlife biologist with the U.S. Forest Service's Rocky Mountain Research Station, is heading out with his crew to find her and other lynx that have recently given birth. They'll spend the day locating dens, counting kittens, and gathering hair samples for DNA testing, and they've agreed to let me tag along. We are looking for F10, the first female trapped and radio-collared as part of Squires's study. Usually lynx roam a mile or two a day, but when the females prepare to have kittens, they zero in on a small area as they choose a den, aiming to hole up for a while. Unlike F70, who will run for what seems like hours, dogged by a tired technician with an antenna in her wake, or wary F40, who eluded capture for years before they got a radio collar on her, F10 rarely gives the researchers any trouble. She chooses excellent dens and generally rears several kittens each year. She's all you could ask for in a study lynx. The drizzle eases and rainsuits and boots start to dry, and everyone's feeling lucky.

"It doesn't matter, because we're about to swim a river," laughs Jay Kolbe, the field crew leader. The west fork of the Clearwater surges past. Licks of whitewater grab at twigs and hunks of dirt, whisking them downstream. The signals from F10's radio collar indicate she has chosen a site near last year's den, just up the slope a bit on the other bank. We walk upstream, angling for a crossing, stopping at a spot where water pours over a lip, forming a green shelf edged with foam. The water would be up to my hips at least. This morning at the gas station market in Seeley Lake, I looked up at the stuffed lynx mounted above the cash register as it stared glassy-eyed over Fritos and cigarettes. At the time, I'd hoped it wasn't the only lynx I'd see. Now, breathing in the chill river spray, I wonder if the taxidermal specimen might be enough.

Squires, taciturn, with a boyish freckled face etched with fine lines, squints at the river. He looks over at the four large technicians on his crew, looks over at me, and says, "It's bad form to kill the writer." After trying and rejecting a third crossing, we pile back in the trucks and head toward a bridge that will lead us farther from the den, but to the right side of the stream.

We haven't gone far, though, before the river widens out, shallow and clear enough to display the green and brown rocks at the bottom. "Look at that. You can cross right there," Kolbe says.

One of the field technicians walks over to Squires's truck to consult. He reports back that Squires said there was too much energy in one of the corners. We drive on. What do I think he really said?

"Let's not kill the writer."

Compared with the well-studied wolf and grizzly, the Canada lynx is a cipher. The northern cat is rare, notoriously elusive, and has a fondness for deep forests and remote landscapes. It has made a pact with winter, evolving to hunt on ridges at high elevations, chasing prey across snowbanks where other predators fear to tread. A lynx's paws are about four inches across--as large as a mountain lion's, though it's no heavier than a bobcat. Dense fur around the edges turns its paws into feline snowshoes, allowing it to cross the fragile crust. Lynx eyes can discern slight shifts in light, the movement of a white hare on a white snowfield against a white sky.

Their lives are tightly knit with those of snowshoe hares, their primary prey. Lynx and hare populations in Canada cycle in tandem every ten years, though here in Montana, at the balmy southern end of their range, cycles are either nonexistent or much less pronounced. The cats can and do eat red squirrels, ground squirrels, and grouse, but an abundance of hares is lynx heaven. A lynx consumes up to 200 hares a year, and when the number of hares decreases to less than one per 2.5 acres, the cats often stop breeding. Early-20th-century naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton wrote that of all the northern creatures, none is more dependent on hares than the Canada lynx. "It lives on Rabbits, follows the Rabbits, thinks Rabbits, tastes like Rabbit, increases with them, and on their failure dies of starvation in the unrabbited woods."

Historically the cats occurred in 24 states, stretching south to Pennsylvania and Utah, but their range is retreating northward. Before reintroduction efforts, Colorado lynx were scarce; in Wyoming they are almost gone. In addition to Montana, 12 other states may still have lynx, although exactly how many is an unanswered question. The species is disappearing, and no one is sure why.