USFS softening lynx rules

By SCOTT McMILLION, Chronicle Staff Writer

The U.S. Forest Service is "softening" its earlier proposals to limit trail grooming and tree cutting in places where lynx live, officials said at an open house in Bozeman Tuesday.

If implemented, the new language would tell land managers "you should" do certain things instead of "you will" do them, said Jim Claar, carnivore program leader for the Forest Service in Missoula.

The Canada lynx, an elusive wild cat distinctive for its large feet and tufted ears, was listed as a threatened species in 2000. That means the federal government needs to figure out how to manage the thick forests that lynx choose as habitat.

In the West, that includes 18.5 million acres on 18 national forests and four Bureau of Land Management Units spread across Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Utah.

Previously, a team of Forest Service biologists had proposed banning the expansion of new grooming routes, either for snowmobiling or skiing, and limiting most tree thinning in lynx habitat, except for within 200 feet of homes.

Groomed trails could allow competing predators, like coyotes, access to lynx habitat, the scientists said. And lynx in the winter eat little but snowshoe hares, which rely on dense stands of evergreens.

However, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service later decided that there was no evidence that trail grooming leads to dead lynx.

And Congress has passed the Bush administration's healthy forests bill, which calls for spending up to $760 million a year removing timber deemed to be a fire threat.

So the agendas conflict, with lynx on one side and fears of fires on the other.

So far, the fear of fire is winning.

"Fire protection is equal to or a little greater than lynx protection" when the time arrives to make decisions of where and how much to cut, Claar said.

The new plan also gives "more latitude for snowmobiling and for other development," he added.

Dave Gaillard, of the Predator Conservation Alliance, called it "a blanket exemption for fuels treatment."

His group is one of about a dozen that sued to force the federal protections for the lynx.

"It sounds like the administration had something to say about the biologists' directives," Gaillard said. "This complete change in direction came as a surprise."

The Forest Service is hosting open houses around the region to explain the lynx proposals.

It is accepting public comment through April 15.

Claar said he expects to see final decisions by the end of this year.

You can find more information on the internet at http:/www.fs.fed.us/r1/planning/lynx.html.

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