When food is scarce, females produce smaller litters or successfully rear fewer young. Before long, the lynx population, like the hares', plummets. Along with the unpredictability of their major food source, lynx face challenges from habitat destruction and fragmentation. But logging may disrupt the cats' travel, because they are reluctant to cross large clear-cuts. And loggers may leave behind the wrong mix of timber types.
Roads are also a problem, both inside and outside the forest.
There are 63 major highways in the northern Rockies, says Ruediger, and this is prime habitat for lynx and other carnivores. Not only do these roads fragment territory and isolate lynx populations, they also result in dead animals. It's difficult to quantify the number of lynx road-kills in the northern Rockies, Ruediger says. An even more basic problem is that so little is known about lynx. Much of what is known about lynx has come from research in the far north.