Based on the feature article by Sid Marty,
appearing in Canadian Geogrpaphic Magazine:

PART ONE -- An Introduction

Canadian Geographic September/October, 1995

The dearth of lynx in the Mackenzie Bison Sanctuary of the Northwest Territories was not unexpected. Kim Poole, a NWT biologist, had warned me well before my arrival that the cats were at the lowest point in their 10-year population cycle. The population of their main prey, the snowshoe hare, had crashed from a high of seven to nine hares per hectare in 1990 to one hare or less per hectare in 1991. The winter after that crash, the lynx had dropped from a high of 30 lynx per 100 square kilometres to three lynx per 100 square kilometres. Nevertheless, when the chance came to visit the sanctuary, I jumped at it. I would learn more about lynx ecology; and who knows, I might even glimpse the cat itself.

The Canada lynx, long haired and of lustrous flare when prime, is a valuable fur-bearer, though it is currently out of fashion and sells for a mere $60 a pelt.

The trapping situation was put into northern perspective for me at Lynx Camp one day by sometime trapper, Mark Sabourin, from Fort Providence. Sabourin remembers 1987, five years after the last lynx crash, when long-haired fur was in high demand. He saw a lynx pelt sell for $1,100 in Hay River, and he himself sold two lynx, a wolverine and a fox for $2,200. "There were buyers showing up from down south with suitcases full of money," he recalls. "The Bay offered a Ski-doo for five lynx. An Elan Ski-doo," he recalls, still finding it hard to believe, "for five lynx."

The paws of the lynx are broad and snowshoe- like, an adaptation vital for the pursuit in deep snow of its principal prey, the snowshoe hare. An adult lynx will eat a hare every one to two days. A lynx's typical home range when hares are plenty is 17 to 20 square kilometres.

The lynx population in some parts of the N.W.T. was put under considerable pressure by 1987's high prices. Concern for its future viability required a management strategy from Poole's employer, the N.W.T. Department of Renewable Resources. Poole wanted to see how important a refuge that was off-limits to trappers might be for lynx to maintain healthy populations during their 10-year boom-and-bust cycles.

The data obtained, he thought, could be used to convince trappers to set up no-kill refuges in parts of their own traplines, to protect the breeding stock of lynx. One way of undertaking such an inquiry is to establish a study area and capture and radio-collar lynx within it. Then one can follow and map their movements to -- in the neutral language of biologists -- "ascertain their fates." If batteries outlive bodies, one can often recover radio-collared critters' remains for an autopsy. Death may come when a lynx strays outside the study area and is trapped; by predation within the study area; and also, in many cases, from starvation. Poole has found that the lynx die-off continues for two years after the hare crash.