Endan­gered species

A key to the recov­ery of the Iber­ian Lynx is the restora­tion of the rab­bit pop­u­la­tion. Land man­age­ment strate­gies include improv­ing the habi­tat for rab­bits, which will ben­e­fit breed­ing lynx. Fauna & Flora Inter­na­tional (FFI) is imple­ment­ing a strat­egy for the con­ser­va­tion of the Iber­ian Lynx in both Por­tu­gal and Spain. The strat­egy aims to secure and man­age a belt of land across south­ern Spain and Por­tu­gal that will pro­vide a cor­ri­dor of suit­able habi­tat large enough to sup­port a viable pop­u­la­tion of this threat­ened cat. In addi­tion to pro­tect­ing a habi­tat of rec­og­nized global impor­tance, the cor­ri­dor will allow for the recon­nec­tion of cur­rently iso­lated lynx pop­u­la­tions and, in the future, for the secure rein­tro­duc­tion into the wild of indi­vid­u­als reared in sanc­tu­ar­ies. One of the projects sup­ported by FFI to stop any fur­ther habi­tat degra­da­tion on the Iber­ian penin­sula is The Cork Ini­tia­tive (more infor­ma­tion here).

These, and other regional, ini­tia­tives con­tributed to the effect of the most impor­tant con­ser­va­tion pro­gramme for Iber­ian lynx, the LIFE Lince project – finan­cially sup­ported by the Euro­pean Union. The out­come of these con­ser­va­tion ini­tia­tives is that in the June 2015 update of the Red List the Iber­ian lynx’ sta­tus has improved, and is down-​listed to Endan­gered (com­ing down from Crit­i­cally Endan­gered). So, good news – with five breed­ing cen­tres and 79 enclo­sures pro­duc­ing lynx for the rein­tro­duc­tion pro­gramme. About 100 lynx born in cap­tiv­ity have been released into the wild since the breed­ing pro­gramme started. And over 327 lynx roam the coun­try­side in Andalu­cia, Castilla-​La Man­cha, Extremadura and Por­tu­gal. In other words, wild Iber­ian lynx spec­i­mens can be found out­side Andalu­cia again.

The decline in lynx pop­u­la­tions is due to a num­ber of fac­tors includ­ing scarcity of prey, loss and frag­men­ta­tion of its cork oak and maquis habi­tats, road casu­al­ties and ille­gal killing. The intro­duc­tion of myx­o­mato­sis and the sub­se­quent impact of haem­or­rhagic fever almost resulted in the local extinc­tion of rab­bits in Iberia, and pop­u­la­tions now stand at only 5% of their 1950s lev­els. Sub­se­quently the pop­u­la­tion size of the Iber­ian lynx dropped dramatically.

Genomic analy­sis of the Iber­ian lynx, con­ducted in 2016 and pub­lished in the jour­nal Genome Biol­ogy, con­firms that it is one of the species with the least genetic diver­sity among indi­vid­u­als, which means that it has lit­tle mar­gin for adaptation.