Armed with dozens of motion-sensing cameras, William Grooms spent this past summer documenting wildlife across Carson National Forest in northern New Mexico. It was his first field season collecting photos for a two-year study to understand how forest structure influences biodiversity in the Southern Rocky Mountains.
Months later, while reviewing his first set of images, Grooms, a Ph.D. student at New Mexico State University, came across something so rare he initially didn’t believe his eyes.
Hidden among the pictured squirrels, rabbits, bears and foxes – wildlife known to roam the San Juan Mountains that straddle the New Mexico-Colorado border – was clear photographic evidence of a snow-adapted wild cat known as a Canada lynx, a species last documented in New Mexico about a quarter-century ago.
“We’re just now starting to go through all the images that we captured, and we’re just really excited that, right off the bat, we identified something really exciting,” Grooms said, adding, “We sent the photos to experts to confirm that it was indeed a lynx, and we’re confident it’s a lynx – no question about it.”
Jennifer Frey, a professor of mammalogy at NMSU and Grooms’s adviser, said Canada lynx broadly inhabit dense boreal and subalpine forests and woodlands across most of Canada and Alaska. They closely resemble bobcats, weighing up to 20 pounds, but have a grayish or yellowish-brown coat, wide fur-lined paws and elongated legs ideal for wading through deep snow and capturing snowshoe hares, their primary prey.
Despite reintroduction efforts in the San Juan Mountains between 1999 and 2006, Canada lynx populations have remained stubbornly low throughout the contiguous United States, and they’re still considered threatened under the Endangered Species Act, Frey said.
“It’s very rare for people to see them, and to know that they’re here, I think, provides something like an inner joy for people,” she said. “But there’s also real-world ramifications.”
Frey explained that Grooms’s proof of at least one Canada lynx in northern New Mexico “may create additional considerations for how state and federal governments manage this species and its habitat.”
Grooms said Canada lynx have a mutualistic relationship with snowshoe hares. Both need one another to survive, as well as deep snow and spruce-fir forest environments. Hares hide and live under downed trees, logs and dense vegetation known as the forest understory, which draws lynx to these specific environments, he said.
“These types of forests and conditions are often targeted for hazardous fuel removals,” he said, “because when they do catch on fire, they contribute to big fires. But these are the types of conditions, though, that really are important to both the Canada lynx and the snowshoe hare.”
That creates a challenge for those managing forests not just in New Mexico but across the West, especially as warmer climates create drier conditions that fuel catastrophic wildfires. Still, Grooms hopes to find solutions through his research.
His project – a collaboration between NMSU and Wildlands Network – aims to build resilience to maintain wildlife diversity in the Southern Rocky Mountains. Leveraging work started by Wildlands Network in 2022, Grooms is studying 10 species inhabiting the region and measuring their preferred forest structure, the arrangement and composition of trees and other vegetation within the forest ecosystem. Using motion-activated cameras, he photographed wildlife at 120 sites across Carson National Forest this past summer. He will do a second round of documentation next summer before completing the project.
Grooms said the objective of the study is to provide forest managers with practical, science-based advice regarding what effects fuel-reduction treatments and timber harvesting have on wildlife associated with closed-canopy coniferous forests in the Southern Rocky Mountains.
“Our study,” Frey said, “is dealing with how we manage forests to make sure that Canada lynx and other species are going to have a future here in New Mexico and the Southern Rocky Mountains.”
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New Mexico State University Ph.D. student William Grooms captured proof of a rare Canada lynx in northern New Mexico in June while collecting data for a research project to build resilience to maintain wildlife diversity in the Southern Rocky Mountains. (William Grooms)
Forest conditions with downed trees, logs and dense vegetation are ideal environments for snowshoe hares and Canada lynx but are often targeted for wildfire fuel removals. (William Grooms)