Where the Lynx Trail Leads

by Karen Herold, Maine Audubon Board president

December 17, 2008

Topics: Conservation | Plum Creek | Lynx

Karen Herold provides this account of last year's Maine Audubon trip to track Canada lynx near Moosehead Lake.

The offer was a January weekend trudging through snow in single-digit cold to sniff urine marks and exclaim over turds. We accepted eagerly.

The details may not sound very appealing, but Maine Audubon's annual field trip to help study endangered Canada lynx is an opportunity that's hard to pass up. Led by a wildlife biologist and an expert tracker through prime habitat around Moosehead Lake, the outing provides the rare chance to connect with this mysterious, at-risk species.

On the Trail

We drove down a logging road northwest of Moosehead Lake scanning the snow for tracks. It had snowed a few days earlier, leaving us several nights of animal business to decipher. It was old hat to our guide Laura Sebastianelli, a naturalist and educator who can divine an animal's intentions from just a few marks.

We slowed again and again for Laura to assess tracks by the road: deer, moose, coyote, fisher...and lynx! Fresh signs at that.

Though the range of bobcat and Canada lynx overlap in a narrow band in Maine, we had found the larger pads of the much rarer lynx, equipped to hunt in deep snow. Given the low numbers of lynx, and their residence in deep forests, not many people see lynx, or even their tracks.

Our other trip leader was Mark McCullough, endangered species biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service with years in wildlife management. Having recently submitted testimony on Plum Creek's development proposal for the Moosehead region, he was keenly aware of the uncertain future of the state's lynx population.

Lynx are central to several land-use controversies in the Northern Forest. Under Plum Creek's proposal to create house lots and resorts around Moosehead Lake, more roads and more traffic mean more collisions with wildlife. Current forestry practices that reduce snowshoe hare habitat could bring further lynx decline. And while trapping lynx is forbidden, they occasionally get caught in traps intended for other species—sometimes fatally.

Tracking Site and Scent

With tracks spotted, we went in the direction of where the lynx had come. We didn't want to come up behind a lynx and unduly stress an animal already under pressure. The course lead through a dense growth of regenerating spruce, a favorite haunt of the lynx's primary prey, snowshoe hare.

Bits of information were passed down the trail from Laura in the lead: a sapling chewed by hares, a bound in the track--and then lynx scat. Mark bagged the valuable specimen, which would be used in a lungworm study, genetic sampling for population research, and lynx diet analysis.

While signs of lynx were our focus, we also interpreted the natural history of a range of other wildlife. Wing prints on the snow and a frozen pellet showed where a grouse had tunneled for the night. A half-pipe trench leading from a hole at the bog's edge was where otters had emerged to make a bobsled run down the bank. In a claw-marked nursery tree bear cubs had climbed to wait for their mother.

Our noses found what our eyes couldn't see. With Laura’s guidance we sniffed stumps and snow banks for scent sprays (sweet: snowshoe hare; skunky: red fox; fishy: otter). At a beaver lodge, the hoarfrost at the top advertised beavers breathing inside. We put our faces to the hole to take in the pondy smell rising through the sticks.

A Lynx Picnic

A single track divided into three, showing how the lynx had walked in each other’s prints, probably a mother and her almost-grown kittens. In a few weeks she would push her offspring away, and have another litter in the spring. As we followed up a high knoll, shouts echoed from the front.

On the level summit, with a view over the forest to the mountain beyond, was the site of a lynx picnic. The only scraps left were a snowshoe hare paw, leg bone, and thatch of pelt. Wandering tracks covered the hillside, along with melted depressions—signs of a catnap—and prints of adolescent lynx bounding, twisting, and turning in play.

"This is the coolest thing I've ever seen," said Mark, who had never found the remains of a kill at a resting site. There was no reason for lynx to come here except to enjoy the view, he said, delighted both as a scientist and fellow admirer of the beauty of the North Woods.

As we said goodbyes and headed home, we knew we would forget many details Mark and Laura had taught us. But we will never forget the lynx family on a dinner hike or how a snowy landscape is a foreign newspaper, full of stories dimly told in animal tracks.