The Canadian Lynx, pictured in this photograph, is becoming a rare sight here in Banff National Park. I have seen many lynx back when I was young at our cabin in the Laurentian Mountains of Quebec. However, in time they have all but disappeared at our cabin due to trapping. The lynx's survival is intertwined with its main food source, the snowshoe hare. Besides being the main course for many other animals, such as the wolf and cougar, snowshoe hare populations are all to easy prey for trappers and poachers. I personally know of one case where a poacher had been discovered with over 200 snowshoe hares in his freezer! Snowshoe hares travel on well-beaten trails, which is one main reason why they are easily trapped. These trails are easy to see in the winter, making them incredibly predictable. However, this is nature's way of providing for the lynx and wolf, which can be too easily unbalanced by the trapper.
In the old days rabbit stew was a main dish at inns and is still popular today. Having spent most of my life in the woods where wolf and lynx populations thrived, I noticed a lack of snowshoe hare tracks in the Bow Valley area in the past 20 years. Today much has been said about the wolves leaving the Bow Valley area and ranchers outside the Park have shot many. I also watched a documentary filmed by Parks Canada about the lynx. In that film they showed a lynx that had a radio collar and one night he disappeared from their surveillance. He was found 38 miles away and he had succumbed to starvation. The answer to this problem is to reintroduce the snowshoe hare into the area in sufficient numbers. In contrast, I have seen lots of wolves at the Columbia Icefields where there are a lot of snowshoe hares, which enable the continuation of wolves to thrive in this area.
Mike Montana
