A lynx that was seen walking around the parts of the Kamloops North Shore is now in the care of the BC Wildlife Park.

Animal Care Supervisor Tracy Reynolds says the animal was caught by conservation officers on Tuesday night and brought to the wildlife park to be checked out because it was behaving abnormally.

“Looking at the animal, it doesn’t appear that anything is wrong, however upon a full physical examination, we found an abdominal infection was found,” she said. “We do have blood work results that are fortunately not terrible. That’s a positive but we are going to try and do some further diagnostics to try and get more answers as to what is going on.

“It could be a disease or it could be from trauma. Currently, he is resting, being kept as comfortable as possible, and is on antibiotics.”

Reynolds adds the initial plan was to leave the animal alone but says because it stuck around Brocklehurst and the North Shore they decided to bring it to the wildlife park.

“He wasn’t moving very quickly and not moving away from Conservation Officers like you would expect. They did contact us to see if we would be able to give it an exam. We were of course are here to help them and they were fortunate enough to be able to capture it,” she added.

“Without their support, it is likely that he would have succumbed to this infection.”

She says the eventual goal is to release the animal back into the wild when it recovers.

“He’s a mature adult male lynx. Captivity would not be a viable option for this individual. I think he’s either going to recover from this or succumb to the infection,” Reynolds said. “Our goal is to have him fully recovered and release him.”

“When they come to us, they aren’t well, so we’ll do our best for it, and we’ll just keep our fingers crossed.”

(Photo via BC Wildlife Park)