(serene music) - Every time I see a track of a lynx or a photo of a lynx or see a lynx, it calms my nerves just a little bit.

(serene music) And so it's just a little bit of a, "Okay, we still got another second with lynx on the landscape.'

This spot just doesn't get old.

It's so beautiful.

(serene music) Until you really get out into the higher peaks of the North Cascades, maybe you don't quite realize that Washington State has such a wild and extreme mountain range.

(bright jaunty music) Ever since I was quite young, I knew that I'd love to settle into the North Cascades landscape.

(bright jaunty music) When we founded Home Range Wildlife Research, it was partly out of love and concern for this particular landscape and wanting to give back to this landscape and do our best to leave it at least in a little bit better shape.

(bright jaunty music) - Do you have the set?

- No, oh, maybe.

Our flagship project right now is looking at Canada Lynx in the North Cascades.

- Maybe today's the day we see a lynx track in the dust.

'Cause we're looking.

- We're trying.

- We're looking.

- We're gonna find one, damn it.

- I got nothing over here.

(footsteps crunch) - If you look this way, going down this tire track, you can see the pattern.

- Look at this one, you can see the whole thing.

- [Carmen] Oh yeah.

- And then toe, toe, toe, toe.

And then this palm pad.

I'm gonna go 90- - [Carmen] Probably (indistinct)- - 2% sure that these are lynx.

- High five me.

(both laugh) They do the weirdest goblin noises We do it, it's like.

(both mimic a lynx cry) (both laugh) It's really ugly.

- [Anna] It's so ugly.

(bright gentle music) - [Carmen] Lynx are similar to a bobcat, but they're specially adapted to living in deep snow conditions.

They've got a big fluffy coat and they have huge outsized paws that are furry.

And these act like snowshoes.

And so this means that even in the winter, they can effectively travel around and hunt for snowshoe hares.

Snowshoe hare depend on a dense forest structure.

And so when a wildfire comes through, it's burning that cover.

Snowshoe hares can't be there and so neither can lynx.

(bright gentle music) - [Anna] Looks like the deer are using this more than people are even.

- [Carmen] The forest service got really good at fire suppression in the 1950s.

And so what that allowed the forest to do was regrow and fill in and even out in age and homogenize into a blanket of trees.

Essentially a blanket of fuels.

(bee buzzes) The orange shapes are fires that did actually burn from 1970 to 1999.

Jump over to this side.

The orange shapes are fires that have burned between 2000 and 2021.

The transformation is huge.

And our study area is this burn, that takes up all of this space.

So over 175,000 acres of burn.

(eerie music) And now we've got hotter, drier, longer summers because of climate change.

(eerie music) It's clear that here this fire came and then it hit this creek bottom and it was wetter here and probably cooler here.

And so it probably died down a bit and maybe didn't even burn through here.

But these little wet meadow areas make good little sort of natural fire breaks and break up the monotony of the burn.

And so the big worry is that if enough of these huge high severity fires come in, in quick succession, there won't be enough habitat to support our population.

(eerie music) This is some of the like classic habitat that we're seeing in the aftermath of this burn where it's this really thick large pole.

I bet if we just peeked in there, we'd see a lot of snowshoe hare pellets.

I always get excited when you look down on the forest floor and it's just littered with snowshoe hare pellets.

'cause where there's hares, there's lynx.

- [Anna] This is where we caught our first lynx.

And so we might hopefully have pictures of him.

- [Carmen] This is the exciting part.

This is like Christmas morning.

- [Anna] 3000 photos.

- [Carmen] Oh boy.

- [Anna] Too bad we're not studying squirrels.

(both laugh) Oh, who's that?

- [Carmen] Actually a coyote?

- [Anna] Oh hell no, that's- - [Carmen] That's our lynx.

(Carmen laughs) - [Carmen] 6:12, 6:12.

- [Anna] So right in the morning.

- [Carmen] Oh, there it goes.

- Let's see if I can just get it kind of out of frame.

That rock is gonna be a problem.

- That rock is a problem.

Wanna do walk tests real quick first?

- Go ahead.

(eerie music) - [Carmen] This ground is hard.

- [Anna] You need knee pads.

- [Carmen] Yeah.

- Not getting you, not getting you - [Carmen] Really?

- Now getting you.

- [Carmen] Interesting.

- That looks great.

'Cause you're in it.

- Oh, you stop.

That's the best setting.

It's better than it was.

- [Anna] Yep, even before.

- [Carmen] Okay, right.

Card is in and it's on.

Awesome, okay, mission accomplished.

(bright gentle music) - [Anna] Yeah, feel this.

Although this is almost a little tender.

- [Carmen] And litter is 12, okay.

- Dang, that's a lot.

- [Carmen] That's a lot.

There's so much litter in these spots that didn't burn.

By learning all the details of how they're using burned habitats and how much fuel is in those habitats that they are using, we can then go into informing treatments.

All right, micro plot's done.

- [Anna] Sweet.

(bright gentle music) - [Carmen] It can feel at times like we might not be able to turn things around for them, but that challenge I think just causes me to dig my heels in more.

What would be lost if we're not able to figure this out?

(bright gentle music) And this basin right here is a lynx's home range that's entirely in this burned area.

And so we're just witnessing this burn scar transform back into lynx habitat.

(bright gentle music) And hopefully it just keeps getting better and better.

This is gonna mean good things for lynx in Washington, but we're in a tenuous spot.

So maybe that's the other thing I think about and feel is hope, but also caution.

Cautiously hopeful, I guess.

(bright gentle music)