A paper in the current issue of the Wildlife Society Bulletin says that when gray wolves are removed from an ecosystem, Canada lynx populations take a double blow. One blow comes when elk and deer populations explode and eat all the shrubs. That leaves the lynx’s prey, the snowshoe hare, with nothing to eat and no where to hide.

The other blow is that without wolves maintaining the “ecology of fear,” coyote populations also increase. And while coyotes will eat anything, they really like to eat rabbits, hares and other creatures of that size. In places where deep snow pack does not keep the coyotes away, lynx can find themselves with little to eat.

Yes, this is yet another example of mesopredator release, but as the pithy Science news article (subscription required) points out, in Canada they have both wolves and lynx. In the U.S. there are places without wolves where lynx have suffered a mysterious decline. It will be interesting to see what happens to lynx populations in places with growing wolf populations.

Read the Oregon State University press release here.

Read an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune here. And here’s a write-up from the East Oregonian.

Photo: Canada lynx, courtesy of Oregon State University