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Meet America’s Most Mysterious Cat

Saturday, June 20, 2009
Posted in Wildlife | Tagged Wildlife

Strikingly beautiful, they look a little like bobcats re-imagined by Dr. Seuss. Their intimate predator-prey relationship with the snowshoe hare underpins the balance of life in the Northern forest. Meet the Canada lynx, one of seven North American ambassador species in EDF’s new feature, Warming and Wildlife.

Our ambassadors confront threats from global warming, and some are officially threatened with extinction.

Because all life is interdependent, harm to our ambassadors also affect the entire web of life in which they live, in many cases with direct effects on human well-being.

Visit our Warming and Wildlife campaign where you’ll meet endangered wildlife such as:

The hairball “rock rabbit” – American pika, which perches atop mountain rock piles and entertains hikers with its whistling. Pikas are cold weather creatures even short exposures to temperatures above 78 degrees F can be fatal.

New England’s stately sugar maple, divine source of pancake syrup and a livelihood for generations of farmers. Warmer winters lead to shorter, more erratic “sugaring seasons” and trigger pest invasions.

The majestic monarch butterfly, which engages in one of nature’s most wondrous annual migrations. The monarch’s high dry wintering grounds in central Mexican fir forests are disappearing and becoming wetter, and its summer grounds are becoming hotter, threatening this beautiful backyard wonder.

These ambassadors all tell a story that warming is already here, no living thing is unaffected, and unless we act now, the web of life will be unalterably changed on our planet.

It is a story reinforced by this week’s release of Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States — a hard-hitting interagency scientific report on how global warming threatens to bake much of the U.S. with dramatically higher temperatures, inundate coastal communities with sea level rise and stronger storm surges, and worsen air pollution and Western water shortages.

The time for action is now. Wildlife like the Canada lynx have no voice in Washington, but we do.

Please raise yours to demand action to stop global warming.

Thanks for all you do to help protect all life on earth.

Meet the Canada lynx, one of seven “ambassador species” threatened by global warming.

Sincerely,

Stacy L. Small, Ph.D.
Conservation Scientist
Environmental Defense Fund