{"id":40316,"date":"2025-01-05T22:04:50","date_gmt":"2025-01-06T03:04:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/world\/the-slow-return-of-the-iberian-lynx\/05\/01\/2025\/"},"modified":"2025-01-05T22:04:50","modified_gmt":"2025-01-06T03:04:50","slug":"the-slow-return-of-the-iberian-lynx","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/world\/the-slow-return-of-the-iberian-lynx\/05\/01\/2025\/","title":{"rendered":"The slow return of the Iberian lynx"},"content":{"rendered":"

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With his leopard-like spots, Navarro – a male lynx – calls out during mating season as he walks towards a camera trap.<\/p>\n

Just short of 100cm (39 inches) in length and 45cm in height, the Iberian lynx is a rare sight. But there are now more than 2,000 in the wild across Spain and Portugal, so you’re much more likely to see them than you were 20 years ago.<\/p>\n

“The Iberian lynx was very, very close to extinction,” says Rodrigo Serra, who runs the reproduction programme across Spain and Portugal.<\/p>\n

At the lowest point there were fewer than 100 lynxes left in two populations that didn’t interact, and only 25 of them were females of reproductive age.<\/p>\n

“The only feline species that was threatened at this level was the sabre tooth tiger thousands of years ago.”<\/p>\n

The decline of the lynx population was partly down to more and more land being used for agriculture, a rise in fatalities on the roads, and a struggle for food.<\/p>\n

Wild rabbits are essential prey for the lynx and two pandemics led to a 95% fall in their number.<\/p>\n

By 2005, Portugal had no lynxes left, but it was also the year that Spain saw the first litter born in captivity.<\/p>\n

It took another three years before Portugal decided on a national conservation action plan to save the species. A National Breeding Centre for Iberian lynxes was built in Silves in the Algarve.<\/p>\n

Here they are monitored 24 hours a day. The aim is twofold \u2013 to prepare them for life in the wild and to pair them for reproduction.<\/p>\n

Serra speaks in a whisper, because even from a distance of 200m you can cause stress to the animals in the 16 pens where most of the animals are kept.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, though, stress is exactly what the lynxes need.<\/p>\n

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