Created: 06/25/2014
KAALtv.com
By: MATTHEW BROWN
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A federal judge on
Wednesday set a 2018 deadline for the government to complete a
long-delayed recovery plan for imperiled Canada lynx in the Lower 48
states.
Wildlife advocates had asked U.S. District
Judge Donald Molloy to push the government into faster action on the
snow-loving big cats, which were added to the list of threatened species
in 2000.
But after federal officials said budget
issues and competing priorities were slowing their work, Molloy
indicated Wednesday in an order that he was reluctant to second-guess
them. He said the January 2018 deadline proposed by the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service was reasonable. "It will not
disrupt the Service's other recovery work, but will also set a date
certain by which the Service will be required to take action," the judge
wrote.
Molloy also ordered the agency to submit semi-annual progress reports each January and July.
Federal
officials were forced to come up with a timeline for the recovery
document when Molloy last month expressed frustration with the
government's track record of delays on the issue. The judge said the
"stutter-step" approach by federal officials since the animal first
gained protections necessitated court intervention. Advocates wanted the recovery plan done by the end of 2016.
Lynx dwell in the forest, where they are rarely seen, and there's no reliable estimate of their population. They
range across parts of 14 states in the Northeast, the Rocky Mountains,
the Great Lakes and the Cascade Range of Washington and Oregon.
Federal
wildlife official say that lynx face a relatively low degree of threat
compared to other protected species. They have proposed large areas in
Montana, Wyoming and other states as critical habitat for the lynx. The
recovery plan would detail the additional steps needed to ensure the
species' long-term survival. But a coalition of
conservation groups sued the government last year for not completing
that document more than a decade after lynx received federal
protections. The plaintiffs in the case are Friends
of the Wild Swan, Rocky Mountain Wild, Biodiversity Conservation
Alliance and the San Juan Citizens Alliance.
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