Judge wants a lynx plan within 30 days

U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy last week ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to come up with a schedule for completing a recovery plan for endangered Canada lynx within 30 days.

Lynx were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 2000, Molloy noted in his ruling. Fourteen years later, FWS still hasn’t come up with a recovery plan for lynx, which subsist almost entirely on snowshoe hares.

“The Service cannot delay its statutory obligation indefinitely,” Molloy ruled. “At some point the agency needs to meet the obligations imposed by Congress when it passed the (Endangered Species Act).”

Molloy’s ruling came after four environmental groups, Friends of the Wild Swan, Rocky Mountain Wild, Biodiversity Conservation Alliance and San Juan Citizens Alliance, filed suit in March 2013.

“It’s long overdue,” said Matthew Bishop, an attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center, who represents the four groups. “A delay of a year, two or even three might be reasonable given other priorities or a heavy workload, but not 14. At some point in time, the court has to step in and say enough is enough. Fortunately, that’s what they did in this case.”

This is not the only lawsuit involving lynx. Environmental groups are also suing Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks in federal court claiming the agency’s trapping regulations don’t do enough to protect lynx. While it’s illegal to trap lynx intentionally, they can get caught in traps set for other species.

That suit seeks to curtail trapping in portions of Carbon, Flathead, Gallatin, Glacier, Granite, Lake, Lewis and Clark, Lincoln, Missoula, Park Pondera, Powell, Stillwater, Sweetgrass and Teton counties that contain critical lynx habitat.

FWP maintains that changes in its trapping regulations have lowered the accidental catch of lynx to just one animal since 2006. That suit has not been settled.