A federal judge says the government has until 2018 to come up with a long-delayed recovery plan for imperiled Canada lynx in the Lower 48 states.
Wildlife advocates had asked the court to force faster action for the snow-loving big cats, which were added to the threatened species list in 2000.
But U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy says in a Wednesday order that a January 2018 deadline proposed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is reasonable.
Molloy also ordered the agency to submit semi-annual progress reports.
Lynx dwell in the forest, where they're rarely seen, and there's no reliable estimate of their population.
They range across parts of 14 states in the Northeast, the Rocky Mountains, the Great Lakes and the Cascade Range of Washington and Oregon.