The state is opening Kenai lynx season — and already predicting it'll close next year

Lynx rise and crash on a roughly 10-year cycle, and Alaska is timing the hunt to it. The state is opening a lynx trapping and hunting season on the Kenai Peninsula from Dec. 15 to Feb. 28 — while openly forecasting that it will likely have to close the next one as the cats approach the low point of their cycle.

Fish and Game says current observations and sealing records show enough lynx on the peninsula to justify a season this winter in Game Management Units 7 and 15. But the same six years of harvest data pointing to a season now is what points toward a closure in 2027. Trappers face no bag limit this year; hunters may take two.

The season itself is a recent comeback: lynx hunting and trapping here were closed until 2020 after numbers bottomed out. One note for trappers — the printed regulations booklet lists the start date wrong as Jan. 1; the real opener is Dec. 15, corrected in the online version.