{"id":4433,"date":"2023-10-26T20:09:09","date_gmt":"2023-10-26T19:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theeuropeannaturetrust.com\/?p=4433"},"modified":"2023-10-31T08:45:19","modified_gmt":"2023-10-31T08:45:19","slug":"iberian-lynx-comeback-tent-visits-cbd-habitat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theeuropeannaturetrust.com\/iberian-lynx-comeback-tent-visits-cbd-habitat\/","title":{"rendered":"Iberian lynx comeback: TENT visits CBD-Habitat"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The recovery of the Iberian lynx is one of the world\u2019s greatest conservation comebacks. In October 2023, The European Nature Trust\u2019s Jacob Dykes visited our partners at CBD-Habitat \u2013 an organisation that has played a key role in Spain\u2019s Iberian lynx recovery.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under an azure sky in the Toledo district, just 30-minutes trainride from Madrid, the scent of petrichor from the Mediterranean forest hits the nose. As red kites leap from oak to oak, Samuel Pla, senior technician at CBD-Habitat foundation, slows the car engine to a halt and winds down the window. He strains to hear the sharp, piercing sound of a magpie\u2019s call \u2013 \u2018it\u2019s an alarm sound, you hear it?\u2019 he says. \u2018We\u2019re close now to the lynx\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For an hour this afternoon, we had been tracking wild Iberian lynx using a telemetry antenna which picks up the location and distance of radio-collared lynxes \u2013 an activity that CBD-Habitat use to monitor the growth and distribution of Spain\u2019s recovering population. The blue flash of the magpie\u2019s wings drops past an oak tree on the Mediterranean savanna, and for a brief moment, it cuts past the silhouette of a cat-like shape, hard to pick out as night creeps forth. \u2018Tres linces!\u2019 whispers Nuria El Khadir, director of CBD-Habitat. With all this tracking equipment, it was the humble magpie, nature\u2019s sentry, that pointed out the lynx to us. And not just one, but three \u2013 a mother with two cubs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pla pulls a thermal imaging scope from his bag and hands it to me. I can just make out three surprisingly large, spotted figures with the naked eye. With the imaging scope, they illuminate into a burning white, seen tracking a big group of rabbits a few hundred meters ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This would have been a very, very rare sight just 15 years ago, were it not for a monumental effort from NGO\u2019s like CBD-Habitat to recover Spain\u2019s lynx population from a historic low of just 94 individuals, to more than 1,600 today.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It has been a difficult history for the iconic, endemic species: in the early 20th century, lynxes were intensely persecuted for hunting sport and the trade in its exotic fur. In the 1950s, a drastic decline in the abundance of wild rabbit \u2013 lynx\u2019s main prey \u2013 brought about by an outbreak of myxomatosis, saw lynx numbers drop intensely. By the 1990s, the rabbit disease had swept across Europe, and when a new variant of Rabbit Haemorrhagic Disease (RHD) emerged, lynx numbers spiralled to just 94 individuals isolated in two populations in And\u00fajar and Do\u00f1ana.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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