Parts of Teton County and Yellowstone National Park are included in a dramatically increased amount of land federal wildlife managers want to designate as critical habitat for the Canada lynx.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Thursday it wants to designate 42,753 square miles in six states that could come under tighter federal oversight as critical habitat for the threatened species.

That’s more than 20 times the 1,841 square miles in three states the agency designated in late 2006.

A final decision might not come until Feb. 15, 2009. Fish and Wildlife said it was accepting public comments on the proposal until April 28.

The proposed critical habitat includes more than 10,500 square miles in Wyoming. That includes the northern half of Yellowstone, areas east and south of Yellowstone Lake and south to Bridger-Teton National Forest. Almost the entire eastern half of Teton County is part of the proposed area, including areas immediately east and south of Jackson. In Lincoln County, areas southeast of Alpine and east of Afton are in the proposed habitat, as are parts of Park, Freemont and Sublette counties.

The agency reconsidered its earlier rulings about the lynx and seven other species after allegations that Julie MacDonald, a deputy assistant secretary of the interior, interfered in the decisions. She has resigned.

In addition to Wyoming, states where land would now be designated as critical lynx habitat are Maine, Minnesota, Idaho, Montana and Washington.
Fish and Wildlife is particularly interested in comments about the Greater Yellowstone Area, including whether it is essential to the conservation of lynx, because the area has the least amount of available research to help with drawing critical-habitat boundaries.

The Greater Yellowstone Area contains the physical and biological features essential to the conservation of the lynx, the Fish and Wildlife Service said, but it is marginal habitat with highly fragmented forage.

Lynx here are at lower densities than in other proposed habitat areas and the population is not connected to Canada, an important source of lynx in the U.S., the agency said. The habitat appears to be of lesser quality here, the agency said, and is less capable than other areas of supporting snowshoe hare prey because it is naturally patchy and contains drier forest types.

“If we determine, based on the best available scientific information and information obtained through public comments, that the GYA does not contain the physical and biological features essential to the conservation of lynx, we will not include it in the final rule,” the Fish and Wildlife Service said in the Federal Register.

However, if the area is essential to lynx conservation, the agency said it intends to refine the critical habitat boundary based on improved data.

Fire suppression or fuels treatment, lack of an international conservation strategy for lynx, traffic and development are other habitat-related threats to lynx in the Greater Yellowstone Area, the agency said. Officials recommended special management depending on fire-suppression and fuels-treatment practices and the design of highway development projects.

Wildlife advocates were cautious as they waited to see whether the proposal would stick, while some were upset no area in the southern Rockies was included.

Colorado, where state wildlife officials have been reintroducing lynx, was not included. The Fish and Wildlife Service said it was uncertain whether Colorado’s population would sustain itself.

The Kettle Range in Washington state wasn’t included either. Fish and Wildlife said there was no evidence of a reproducing lynx population in the past 20 years.

Michael Senatore, director of the biodiversity program of the Center for Biological Diversity, said it would take time to review the proposal but that it was a step in the right direction.

“What’s unclear is whether this is sufficient,” he said. “It looks like they have left out important areas. There’s nothing in the southern Rockies. That’s problematic given there are lynx there. It also looks like for the most part they have focused on what may be an overly narrow definition of ‘occupied habitat.’”

He was also concerned the proposal could change within the next year.
“If they exclude most of what they’re proposing, it’s not going to mean much for the lynx,” Senatore said.

The 2006 designation of critical habitat for lynx was for Voyagers National Park in Minnesota, Glacier National Park in Montana and North Cascades National Park in Washington.

In the latest proposal, about 58 percent of land is on federal land, 30 percent on private land, and the rest on state, tribal or other ownership, Fish and Wildlife said.