Lynx Added to Chain of Wildlife Restoration : Environment: Wild animals are being returned to former habitats across the country. But not all predators are being welcomed back.

Dozens of Canada lynx from the Yukon are digging their claws into the high peaks of New York’s Adirondack Mountains in one of the nation’s newest wildlife-restoration projects.

In addition, female moose may be moved to the Adirondacks as early as next year to keep company with a lonely herd of bulls.

Some nature lovers also want to bring back wolves and cougars, but some residents say that would be going too far.

One advocate of wolves and cougars is Neil Woodworth, lobbyist for the Adirondack Mountain Club.

“You’re never going to see them, you’re never going to be threatened by them, but you’re going to hear them at night,” he said. “It’s the very essence of the wilderness, the kind of experience you’ll treasure a lifetime.”

Many people are afraid of wolves and cougars, but the less dangerous lynx and the docile moose are welcomed by conservationists and mountain-dwellers alike.

Since last year, 50 lynx have been released around Newcomb in Essex County, about 100 miles north of Albany, said biologist Rainer Brocke, who heads the program. About 40 more lynx are to be released next year.

Canada lynx are sleek cats with long fur and tufted ears, weighing from 18 to 35 pounds. They live in forests, and were wiped out by lumbering in the Adirondacks in the late 1800s.

The high terrain can sustain about 70 lynx, said Brocke, who is a professor at the state University College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse. By next year, enough lynx will have been released to make up for cats lost to road kills, disease and poaching, he said.

Biologist Bob Lund of the New Jersey Fish, Game and Wildlife Division said: “New York has a tremendous land advantage with the Adirondacks. They’ll probably be real successful.”

New Jersey’s efforts to reintroduce the bobcat--the lynx’s cousin--to the northern third of the state failed, mainly because only 24 cats were released between 1977 and 1981, Lund said.

Land development “essentially pushed out and ran over” New Jersey’s bobcats in the 1950s, Lund said. Only a few bobcats remained, he said, and their population has been virtually unchanged by the restoration effort.

The lynx may fare better. So far, six have been killed by cars. One raided a chicken coop and was shot by the farmer. The rest are thriving, and at least one pair apparently mated last spring, Brocke said.

The cats are tracked by radio collars. The males have roamed areas as large as 700 square miles. Some lynx have wandered all the way to New England and New Brunswick, Brocke said.

“They exercise their freedom to roam,” he said. “Some exercise it too much.”

The lynx are looking for “areas where they’re interested in living and setting up shop,” said Kent Gustafson, a research assistant for the project. Those released in 1989 are settling down, he said.

Environmental officials hope to release female moose that may entice about 20 bull moose wandering the Adirondacks to settle down as well.

“The number (of moose) there now is not going to get any larger because most of them are males,” Brocke said.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation could begin releasing moose in the mountains by late next year, said Peter Nye, who heads the agency’s endangered species unit.

Although New Jersey’s bobcat program failed, wild turkey restoration has been a dramatic success. A decade ago, 23 turkeys were released. Today, New Jersey has 5,000 wild turkeys, enough to allow for limited hunting, Lund said.

In North Carolina, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has reintroduced 22 red wolves in Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge since 1987.

The wolves were bred in captivity from the last 40 of their species. The survivors were rounded up in Texas and Louisiana in 1973 under the Endangered Species Act.

“I tell people that if the Endangered Species Act had not been passed until 1976, there would be no red wolves today,” said Warren Parker, who heads the program.

Two litters of red wolf pups were born in the refuge this year, Parker said, and more wolves will be released in other parts of the Eastern Seaboard next year.

Contrary to popular myths, wolves and other carnivores are not beasts from hell, Parker said.

“You’re not going to have to pull up and move because we put wolves in next to you,” he said. “They’re not going to chase school buses and attack children.”

Red wolves prey on small mammals and do not hunt in packs. The gray wolf, which does hunt in bands, is getting a cooler reception in the Adirondacks and other areas where conservationists want them reintroduced.

Defenders of Wildlife, a conservation group in Washington, D.C., is pushing federal officials to re-establish gray wolves in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming.

“A bloody and pointed and government-sanctioned effort to shoot, poison and trap the gray wolf off the face of the Earth” has left it all but extinct in the lower 48 states, said the group’s spokeswoman, Mary Margaret Patterson.

Since the wolf died out in Yellowstone around 1920, the park has been overrun by elk and bison, the wolf’s prey, Patterson says.

The wolf is needed to thin elk and bison herds that are on the brink of starvation, she says.

Ranchers, fearful for their livestock, oppose bringing back the wolf.

Adirondack residents don’t mind the lynx, which feed on snowshoe hare and other small mammals, but only the staunchest nature lovers want large predators such as wolves and cougars living next door.

“They add an incredible aesthetic quality,” said Woodworth of the Adirondack Mountain Club.

A wolf pack can wrestle a large mammal such as moose to the ground.

Putting wolves back in the Adirondacks would jeopardize the state’s efforts to repopulate moose, Brocke said. Also, competition from another cousin may leave no room for the gray wolf in the Adirondacks.

“The coyote has taken over the ecological niche of the original wolf,” Brocke said. “We have a mini-wolf in the Adirondacks already.”

Talk of restoring wolves and cougars to the Adirondacks is premature, since researchers are waiting to see how the lynx fare.

“Lynx aren’t a threat to anyone,” Gustafson said. “If you’re going to learn how to do something, you’ve got to start small.”