Lynx #26 was captured west of Babbit, MN on January 8, 2005. An adult female, she was fitted with an ATS VHF radiotelemetry collar and released. We believe that she had kittens in the spring of 2005, but that the litter failed because she was moving widely in early June instead of staying close by the kittens.

We could not find L26 during the summer, fall, or winter of 2006. Imagine our surprise when we received a call from an Ontario Conservation Officer in January saying that L26 and her collar had been caught by a trapper near Terrace Bay, Ontario—over 300 miles by land from where she was last located.

L26 weighed about 25 pounds when she was released in January 2005 and then probably had kittens.  When she died in January 2006 she actually weighed only 18 pounds. The trapper indicated that the snowshoe hare population in his area had declined precipitously over the past two years.

Study animals are anaesthetized in many of the images on this site. They regain consciousness and leave the capture site shortly after processing is finished. Click on map or any image for a larger view.