No, I'm sorry that's incorrect. Bobcats are a more generalist predator. They are better able to adapt to different habitats and thus different prey bases. This is why you see bobcats from the desert to the mountains and everywhere in between.

The lynx's historical range has never included such low elevation habitats. The lynx's historical range has always coincided with the range of the snowshoe hare. Where the snowshoe hare occurs at sufficient density is where you see viable lynx populations. The adaptations that lynx have developed through natural selection are for mobility in deep snow. They rely on this mobility to catch prey and outcompete other predators in a certain kind of habitat, namely high elevationsubalpine fir andlodge-pole pine forests. In other habitats, the lynx is notadapted to thrive for a number of reasons, water use, prey escapability, prey cover etc. The lynx loses it's advantages. If lynx were able to thrive in the same types of habitats as bobcats then we would have seen lynx in other types of habitats (like desert and grassland) historically, but we did not.

There is some evidence however, that shrub-steppe type habitats may act as corridors for movement to/from other areas of core habitat like I described above. In several studies, lynx would never cross openings ofwider than 100 meters. Also, numerous predator-prey studies have shown lynx populations to cycle directly with snowshoe populations, not with squirrel, grouse or any other prey population fluctuation.

I hope this helps.