Little lynx: Colville Tribes confirm Canada lynx kittens in the Kettle Range

The den was in a boulder field high up in the Kettle Range, in a rugged spot no one would visit without a reason.

The female Canada lynx that made the den had a reason, and the GPS signals beamed twice daily from its collar were reason enough for wildlife biologist Rose Piccinini.

Piccinini, who works for the Colville Confederated Tribes, went up there with a few other biologists in early June to look for the den. They combed through the rough terrain, looking under rocks and snags. Eventually, they found it – a small depression at the base of a tree.

Inside, they found exactly what they’d hoped to find: kittens.

“We saw the adorable two little fluffballs in there with their little blue eyes lookihng up at us,” said Piccinini, who works for the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation’s wildlife department. “It was pretty incredible.”

The two kittens were the first confirmed evidence of Canada lynx reproduction in the Kettle Range since the Colville Tribes began moving lynx from northern British Columbia into the range in Ferry County, where the midsized felines had been considered all but extinct.

More than three dozen lynx have been released in the Kettle Range since 2021. At first, biologists weren’t sure how the cats would do, whether they could make a living and reproduce there.

Those two kittens – and the four others from another lynx that Piccinini and her team found a week later – provide a fairly convincing answer.

“There’s nothing like a female choosing a spot and saying, ‘This is where I can raise these kittens,’ to affirm all of our guesswork of how we thought and hoped lynx would return to the Kettles,” Piccinini said. “It’s pretty amazing to be a part of that.”

It’s a big step forward for efforts to return a self-sustaining population to the range. Dave Werntz, the science and conservation director for Conservation Northwest, which helps with the lynx project, said the kittens show that lynx can have a future in the Kettle Range.

“It’s all for getting to that point of showing that these animals are able to sustain themselves on this landscape,” Werntz said. “That’s what finding the den meant.”

Former stronghold

Canada lynx like high elevations, downed trees, deep snow and the taste of snowshoe hares. They’re bigger than bobcats but smaller than cougars, and they have mottled coats, pointy ears and massive paws that help them float on top of the snow.

The cats are most common in Canada and Alaska. The southern portion of their range stretches into the northern portion of the Lower 48 states. Populations exist in the North Cascades and the Rockies, and between those two ranges sits the Kettles.

“The Kettle Range was a place that historically had a lot of lynx,” Werntz said.

Fur trappers took advantage of that for decades. In 1969, 26 of the 31 lynx trapped statewide came from the Kettle Range in Ferry County, according to a report from the U.S. Forest Service. The take ebbed and flowed in the years after that, but trappers were consistently taking good numbers of lynx out of the Kettles.

Declining population numbers had become apparent by the 1990s, though. A snow tracking survey conducted from 1992 to 1996 turned up just two sets of tracks in separate years, according to the Forest Service report.

“They were essentially trapped out,” Werntz said.

Lynx trapping was stopped in Washington in 1990. The state classified the cats as threatened at the state level in 1993, estimating at the time that there were fewer than 200 in the state. Federal protections under the Endangered Species Act were ordered in 2000.

About 50 lynx are believed to live in Washington . Most of them are in an area of the North Cascades that encompasses parts of Okanogan, Chelan, Whatcom and Skagit counties, according to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

In the Kettle Range, the cats were long believed to be on the brink of extirpation, if not already there. Richard Whitney, wildlife manager for the Colville Confederated Tribes, said officials generally believed the species had been trapped out of existence there, and that individual lynx from more robust populations in Canada had no way to migrate south and establish themselves in the range.

There were random flashes of hope – tracks spotted on a mountain, a trail camera picture – but Whitney said there was never enough evidence to suggest lynx would return on their own.

“It’s hard for them to get re-established once you kind of reduce them to a certain level,” Whitney said.

The Kettle Range has long been seen as a valuable swath of habitat. Lynx exist in a network of small populations, Werntz said, and they wander long distances. A population in the Kettles could connect lynx in the Cascades and the Rockies, possibly allowing gene flow between the small populations and aiding in the species’ recovery across its range in the western U.S.

In 2019, Conservation Northwest funded a study that showed there was plenty of habitat for the cats in the Kettles. After that, the Colville Tribes crafted a plan to transplant 10 lynx a year for five years from the mountains east of Kelowna, British Columbia, to the southern end of the Kettles, on the Colville Reservation. The hope was that planting 50 or so lynx would be enough to jump-start a self-sustaining population.

The first group was released in 2021, and more have been brought south every year since.

Each lynx released into the range wears a GPS collar that tells biologists where they go. Over the years, they’ve seen wide-ranging movements, which is typical lynx behavior. One went as far north as Prince George, British Columbia.

It’s also how biologists watch for signs of a female choosing a den.

Denning season

Collars send GPS points every 13 hours. When a lynx has chosen a den, the points form a sort of star pattern – one taken while the cat is in the den, the other taken while it’s out hunting.

Over time, a cluster of points shows up, signaling to Piccinini that a female cat might have chosen a den. Lynx only do so for one reason.

“She’s only going to den when she’s very ready to have kittens,” Piccinini said.

Starting in May, Piccinini starts paying closer attention to where the lynx are going each day.

Before this year, there were lynx that attempted to den. But when Piccinini and her team went looking for them, always two weeks after they thought kittens had been born per federal regulations, they were either too late or simply didn’t find it. They’d found dead kittens in the past but no live ones.

This spring, she saw clusters of points from two of the six female lynx that were wearing collars. She reached out to members of the lynx team and to the photographer David Moskowitz, who has been documenting the project.

In early June, they hiked up to the boulder field. They used a telemetry device to check the location of the mother lynx in the field. When they knew they were close, they walked slowly, looking for any sign – fur, or a smooth spot in the ground.

It wasn’t easy. Moskowitz said they walked past it once before finding the two kittens in a hollowed out spot under a tree.

It was the moment they’d all been waiting for. Everyone there had worked on the project since the beginning, Piccinini said. These kittens were the culmination of years of work. Two living, breathing signs that it had all been worth it.

“We all were looking at each other, but we didn’t want to be loud or celebrate,” Piccinini said. “We were just beaming at each other.”

They took turns looking into the den. Moskowitz got some photos. Then they left, as quickly and quietly as they could. When they got far enough away, they stopped to bask in the moment.

About a week later, it was time for an encore. The other lynx was still denning, so Piccinini and the team went to take a look. It was in another high part of the range with scads of fallen timber – enough that someone could walk a long ways without setting foot on the ground.

They stepped carefully and looked between the logs. One biologist saw it and signaled silently to the others, holding up her fingers to count the kittens – one, two, three … four.

“Four kittens,” Piccinini said. “It was amazing.”

The plan is to return to the dens later this year after the lynx have moved elsewhere. They’ll get more photos, document the interior of the dens, take any biological samples they can find. Piccinini is fairly certain she knows which female bred with which male and that she can track the kittens’ lineage into the future.

In the fall, it will be time for the tribes’ crews to go back Canada. It’s the last year of transplants.

Whitney said they don’t expect to go back for more after this winter, instead giving the lynx a chance to show they can persist on their own.

The kittens are a good sign.

“I think we’re showing that they can persist,” Whitney said. “The habitat and the prey base is there. They’re sticking around and they’re having successful kittens. Everything they need is there.”