BILLINGS, Mont. — U.S. wildlife officials finalized a recovery plan for imperiled populations of Canada lynx on Wednesday and proposed new habitat protections in the southern Rocky Mountains for the forest-dwelling wildcats that are threatened by climate change. The fate of the proposal is uncertain under President-elect Donald Trump: Officials during the Republican’s first term sought unsuccessfully to strip lynx of protections that they’ve had since 2000 under the Endangered Species Act. Almost 7,700 square miles (20,000 square miles) of forests and mountains in Colorado and northern New Mexico are covered under the habitat proposal. …Their numbers never were great in the contiguous U.S., which is at the southern fringe of the species range, but the hope is to maintain some population strongholds so they can persist in a warmer world.