Federal wildlife officials must come up with a schedule to complete a long-delayed recovery plan for imperiled Canada lynx within 30 days, under an order from a U.S. district judge in Montana.

The snow-loving wild cats were listed as a threatened species by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2000. But after the agency repeatedly missed its own deadlines to come up with a road map for recovery, environmental groups sued last year in federal court in Montana to force the government into action.

Siding with the plaintiffs, U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy on Thursday gave officials 30 days to propose a schedule for completing the recovery plan.

Molloy said the history of the case raised skepticism about the agency’s ability to get the work done without court intervention. Federal officials previously had pledged to initiate recovery plans in 2007, 2011 and, most recently, by the end of this year.

“The stutter-step approach taken by the service raises the concern — even the certainty — that if a deadline is not in place, a new impediment will continually prevent the development of a recovery plan for the lynx,” Molloy wrote.

Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman Leith Edgar said the agency had no immediate comment. 

Lynx are rarely seen across a 14-state range that includes portions of the Northeast, the Rocky Mountains, the Great Lakes and the Cascade Range of Washington and Oregon. It’s unknown how many survive in the U.S. 

The government has taken some steps to protect the animals since their 2000 listing, including a 2009 designation of habitat considered critical to the species’ survival. 

Federal officials have previously blamed the delay in the recovery plan in part on lawsuits over the 39,000 square miles of lynx habitat identified in Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Minnesota and Maine. It’s also due to the higher priority that’s been given to other species that face more acute threats, officials said.

But Molloy said such justifications become less persuasive the longer the delay continues.

The lawsuit was brought by Friends of the Wild Swan, Rocky Mountain Biodiversity Conservation Alliance and the San Juan Citizens Alliance. 

They argued the government should be pushing ahead on both the habitat and recovery issues simultaneously to keep the lynx from edging closer to extinction.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Matthew Bishop said he hoped to work with federal wildlife officials as they craft the schedule.

“They’ve got a mandatory duty to do a recovery plan, and it’s been too long,” Bishop said. “My clients would be willing to give them a reasonable amount of time to make sure it’s done right and done well, but they want it done.”