Cinnamon the lynx was found by conservation officers on Mar. 21 before being transported to the B.C. Wildlife Park (Image Credit: CFJC Today)

By Chad Klassen

B.C. WILDLIFE PARK

Lynx on verge on being released to natural habitat after tick infestation

May 1, 2019 | 5:05 PM

KAMLOOPS — It is tick season, but it is not only affecting people who are out in the backcountry. Animals in the Kamloops area are also victims of the blood-sucking creatures.

A lynx is recovering at the B.C. Wildlife Park after an encounter with ticks and is set to be released back into the wild soon. Yet the wildlife park staff didn’t know if Cinnamon would even make it.

“When we got her in, she was incredibly thin,” said wildlife park animal manager Tracy Reynolds. “I think she probably had a hard winter and her body condition was really low.”

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The name Cinnamon comes from where she was found — near Cinnamon Ridge. Local conservation officers were called to the area on March 20, but couldn’t find her. They came back the next day, though, and found her, but she was in rough shape.

“Something wasn’t quite right with it,” said conservation officer Austin Lord. “When it walked slowly, it was fine. When it started to move a little faster, its coordination was way off. We weren’t sure if it was a head injury or maybe something was broken. So we were able to capture that lynx with partners with the B.C. Wildlife Park.”

When Cinnamon first arrived, it was thought that she had been hit by a car. But that story didn’t quite add up to park staff.

“She went from being somewhat uncoordinated to completely flat out within a couple days,” noted Reynolds. “She couldn’t move any part of her body. She couldn’t even swallow at the worst of it.”

In the first 24 hours, Cinnamon was on a feeding tube in order to get the proper nutrition. A colleague at the park then asked if staff had checked for ticks. A tick infestation was in fact causing the issues.

“We weren’t even thinking about tick paralysis, so we started looking and found two on her immediately, and we removed them. She didn’t recover right away, so we kept looking for ticks and the next day we found two more ticks that were engorged and took them off,” said Reynolds.

After their removal, the month-long recovery began, but Reynolds says if it wasn’t for the conservation officers, Cinnamon would not have made it.

Plans are now in the works to have her released back near Cinnamon Ridge as early as Monday.

“It’s nice to see an animal like this come in so sick, then being able to release it just makes what we do so worthwhile.”