Mumma, a veteran of brutal political skirmishes from his years at the U.S. Forest Service, thought he'd left behind this kind of "sack full of rattlesnakes." Reintroducing predators was always dicey, he knew—both biologically and politically. But Westerners' attitudes about predators were changing: Public support for the two-year-old Yellowstone wolf reintroduction was running pretty darned high, and the previous year in Colorado voters had outlawed wildlife trapping and poisoning.

Mumma also knew that lynx were astoundingly beautiful and mysterious creatures. They belonged here. "OK, then," he said. "Let's do it, and let's make it work."

Armed with the chief's blessing, the group fanned out to orchestrate the lynx's return. Rick Kahn, the DOW's wildlife management supervisor, lobbied relentlessly, both in and out of the agency, trying to convince an array of skeptics that reintroducing the lynx was a good idea: ranchers who congenitally hated carnivores, loggers and ski operators worried about development restrictions, animal rights activists, and biologists who argued that Colorado offered marginal lynx habitat. Even inside the DOW some worried that the project was hastily conceived and amounted to a "dump and pray."

Finally executives at Vail, embroiled in a controversial proposed expansion of the resort, ponied up $250,000. Kahn had argued that having a viable lynx population on the ground was better than having the Endangered Species Act hanging over their heads.

Next Kahn brought DOW researcher Tanya Shenk onto the team. The lynx could not have been adopted by a more tenacious and dedicated den mother. Shenk knew that an Adirondacks reintroduction in the late 1980s had failed. But Colorado had more places where wild things still were, and the animals stood a better chance here. Or so she hoped.

The DOW contracted with Canadian trappers to bring lynx to Colorado and constructed holding pens in the southern part of the state. On January 29, 1999, the first of 41 lynx from British Columbia arrived.

"Hey, you're free"

On a warm midwinter day on the east side of the Continental Divide in the San Juan Mountains, the first lynx released into Colorado didn't seem to realize how historic she was. With the press peering on, DOW biologist Gene Byrne ceremoniously slid open the door of a metal cage.

Nothing happened. The lynx sat in her straw nest inside the cage for several minutes, perhaps intimidated by the row of telephoto lenses trained on her. Byrne tilted the cage, leaned down, and spoke softly: "Hey, you're free."