IN 2016, NOT LONG after the catastrophic North Star Fire ripped through north-central Washington, Confederated Colville Tribes wildlife biologist Jarred-Michael Erickson was walking through a burned forest on Colville lands when he found an unusual paw print in the snow: A lynx was on the move. “It’s lynx habitat historically,” said Erickson, who is now the tribes’ chairman. “It’s just there hasn’t been many lynx in the state since they’ve been hunted down.” Long threatened by hunting and habitat destruction, only a few hundred lynx are believed to remain in the continental United States, but with the help of federal funding through the Endangered Species Act, the Colville Tribes have released 25 animals on their 1.4 million acres and plan to release another 24.
Tribal nations have a complicated relationship with the 1973 Endangered
