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Key areas of lynx habitat in the Greater Yellowstone Area were missing from a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designation last week, according to conservation groups.

Fish and Wildlife biologists have announced 39,000 square miles of critical lynx habitat in Washington state, northern Montana, Minnesota, Maine and the Greater Yellowstone Area.

Conservation groups called the new designation a drastic improvement over the previous plan, which designated only 1,841 square miles of habitat and left out Greater Yellowstone completely.

The Endangered Species Act provides protections for land designated as critical habitat.

Still, conservation groups say lynx have been documented in areas around Greater Yellowstone that were not included in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decision, including portions of Grand Teton National Park and the Palisades. 

Lynx typically favor large sections of habitat with an abundant population of snowshoe hares, their primary food source. Habitat can include younger conifer forests.

Louise Lasley, public lands director for the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, said photographic evidence exists showing lynx in the Palisades area as recently as January.

“I’m not sure why the Palisades was left out,” she said. “When you look at the map and you see how extensive the additions are, it seems strange that big chunk is not in there.”

Still, Lasley said she considers the new designation “very positive.”

“It was very obvious that what has been identified by researchers as the best habitat – the Wyoming Range and up towards Togwotee – was included,” she said, adding that a wildlife corridor between the Wyoming Range and Togwotee was also a part of the decision.

The agency action revises an earlier designation of only 1,841 square miles after the agency determined that a deputy assistant secretary for the Department of the Interior, Julie MacDonald, had interfered with the scientific process.  

David Gaillard, rocky mountain region representative for Defenders of Wildlife, also said the Palisades should have been included, along with a portion of Grand Teton National Park, sections of national forest east of Yellowstone National Park, a section of land around Big Sky, Mont., and land on the southern tip of the Wyoming Range.  

“We’re pleased that there is a whole lot more for lynx than the previous version, yet we have concerns that some major areas were excluded,” Gaillard said.

Gaillard said Fish and Wildlife biologists used reproductive data on lynx that are more than a decade old to come up with the critical habitat designation.

“They haven’t found any evidence of reproduction in the years since,” he said.

Gaillard also pointed out that the designated habitat includes only land where lynx currently live, not good habitat that lynx could occupy as the species recovers.

“They should look for adjacent areas of suitable habitat that are currently vacant that could support a recovered population,” he said.

Both Gaillard and Lasley said the new habitat designation could hinder several oil and gas proposals in the region, including a plan for energy development in the Noble Basin on the Hoback Rim and a plan for 44,700 acres of development in the Wyoming Range west of Merna.

Gaillard said the Hoback Rim and Wyoming Range leases could threaten not only habitat but also a wildlife corridor that lynx use to move among the Gros Ventres Range, the Wind River Range and the Wyoming Range.

“If the project was big enough that it impaired the ability of the critical habitat to support a recovered lynx population, then it cannot go forward,” he said. “If the Forest Service is going to maintain lynx in Wyoming, these are some of the places they need to maintain. Not just for lynx but for a variety of reasons, they need to withdraw these leases.”

Shawn Sartorius, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who helped write the latest lynx proposal, said some of the areas left out of the critical habitat designation do contain good lynx habitat but not enough of it to sustain a reproductive female with a litter of kittens.

“People who are conservation activists,” he said, “they honestly see lynx habitat components, but if there isn’t enough of it or if it is in patches that are small and spread out, [lynx] are not going to make it.”

“Lynx use huge swaths of land,” Sartorius said. “Our job is to take the broader picture and make our honest assessment of where we think lynx can make it.

“In my opinion, we’ve erred on the side of overestimating in the Greater Yellowstone Area,” he said.