A rare Colorado lynx when skiers captured video of it walking casually across a run at Purgatory Resort has been found dead, state wildlife officials said Monday.
A necropsy — the wildlife version of an autopsy — is planned to determine the cause of death. But Colorado Parks and Wildlife announced in a news release Monday that a preliminary examination revealed the lynx to be emaciated.
“The first time I saw it I wasn’t entirely surprised because we do get a lot of reports of lynx sightings,” Scott Wait, a senior terrestrial biologist for CPW’s southwest region, said in a statement. “But after I saw three more videos of the same animal behaving the same way in the same area I figured that something was wrong with the cat. Wild animals die of various causes just like people do.”
The lynx was first spotted last month at Purgatory, when it strolled through a group of skiers and snowboarders, several of whom posted video of the encounter online. It was found dead Sunday by Purgatory ski patrol members on a run on the resort’s west side.
The necropsy will check for parasites, examine stomach contents and look for injuries and signs of organ damage to determine what killed the lynx. The results could take weeks.
Lynx once roamed widely in Colorado but were extinct in the state by the 1970s. In 1999, state wildlife officials began reintroducing the cat, which favors high-elevation areas with thick forests and deep snow. CPW estimates there are now as many as 250 lynx in Colorado, many of them concentrated in the San Juan mountains of southwest Colorado.
The sighting at Purgatory, which is near Durango, came days after a woman .
“We don’t want people to think that a lynx is sick every time they see one,” Wait said in his statement. “Lynx are doing well in Colorado but face the same challenges all wildlife does.”
