Free Talk: Canada Lynx in Disturbed Landscapes

Join us for the September Lunchtime Expedition, "A Specialist Carnivore at its Southern Range Periphery: Canada Lynx in Disturbed Landscapes," presented by Dr. John Squires, Research Wildlife Biologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rocky Mountain Research Station in Missoula, Montana.
 

The in-person talk takes place in the Center’s Coe Auditorium, with a virtual option available at https://us02web.zoom.us/.../reg.../WN_3UViCAd6TcC5m3gEmPNusg
 

As fire and insect outbreaks increase across the West, our need to understand how natural and human-caused disturbances impact forest wildlife is increasingly urgent. This is especially true with the added challenges of a changing climate and an ever-expanding human footprint across natural landscapes.
 

Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis) occupy high elevation, subalpine forests that have been impacted by natural disturbance for millennia. However, in the Northern and Southern Rocky Mountains of the West, the pace and extent of this disturbance is increasing, resulting in changes to forest age, type, and arrangement that affect lynx as well as other species, even human recreationists. Land management agencies also struggle to balance the need for species conservation with the desire for forest products, increased fire resilience, and outdoor recreation in this era of new disturbance.
 

For the past many years, Squires has logged Canada lynx movement with GPS collars to find patterns in how they use disturbed landscapes. By combining lynx locations, satellite images, and field measurements of vegetation and recreation, that research provides answers and guidance to land managers about how to conserve this species in a changing world. In this presentation, Squires discusses insights into how this elusive cat responds to natural and human-caused disturbance within the context of lynx conservation and forest management.