Ideally, these interventions will boost the
number of breeding females to 750 on the Ibe-
rian Peninsula by the end of 2040, at which point
the species would be much less vulnerable to
extinction, according to Salcedo.
“It’s an ambitious objective, but it is neces-
sary,” he says.IN THE MID-20TH CENTURY, well-known Spanish
TV personality and naturalist Félix Rodríguez de
la Fuente dubbed the lynx the “Iberian jewel.”
This long-standing public fondness for the
cat helped local governments, nonprofits, and
private individuals lobby the European Union
successfully to fund the lynx’s recovery. At
more than $90 million to date, it’s one of the
biggest conservation investments ever made
on the continent.
“If you walked up to someone in Madrid,
they would say they are proud of the lynx,” says
Nuria El Khadir Palomo, managing director of the
Madrid-based Foundation for the Conservation
of Biodiversity and its Habitat, one of the Life
LynxConnect project partners. Palomo and her
colleagues advise the partner groups on how best
to use their allocated lynx- conservation budget.
They also study lynx habitats throughout Spain to
determine which areas can support the animals.
The cat is popular, even among farmers and
landowners, but a few view lynx as pests and
occasionally will poison or trap them for sup-
posedly harming livestock. Illegal killings make
up nearly 25 percent of annual lynx deaths on
the peninsula, the second highest cause of non-
natural death, after vehicle strikes. Furthermore,
hunting has deep roots in southern Spain; hunt-
ers historically have killed lynx for sport and
have seen the predators as competitors for their
favorite quarry, rabbits.
That’s why education is the “best tool to
improve the lynx population,” says Maribel
García Tardío, lead technician for Andalusia’s
Iberian lynx recovery plan. She and her col-
leagues regularly meet with landowners and
hunters, explaining how lynx rarely kill larger
domestic animals, such as lambs, and will dis-
place red foxes and other carnivores that are
more likely to prey on these animals.
This outreach has paid off. Many landowners
have launched tourism ventures that offer visi-
tors the chance to see the bushy-bearded feline
in the wild.
Conservationists also are working to reduce“The lynx is a symbol of Iberian nature, and
its conservation was the responsibility of all of
us. Thanks to the work carried out over the last
20 years, it is now also one of the greatest exam-
ples of successful conservation worldwide,” says
Francisco Javier Salcedo Ortiz, regional coordi-
nator of the Iberian lynx recovery plan for Anda-
lusia, an autonomous state in southern Spain.
But the cat’s not out of danger just yet. Its
thousand- square-mile territory is a collage of
five—soon to be seven—isolated groups. For
Iberian lynx to fully recover, they must be able
to roam from one group to another, ensuring
the species’ long-term health by diversifying
gene pools.
That’s why the next stage of the Life project,
Life LynxConnect, which was launched in
2020, will focus on creating at least 10 wildlife
corridors—six-square-mile tracts of rabbit-rich
habitat that the scientists call stepping-stones—
to act as passageways among the existing lynx
groups. Scientists selected these habitats based
on predictions of where lynx are most likely to
travel. For instance, lynx prefer to take the short-
est paths through undeveloped and intact habi-
tats, such as natural forest, and avoid broken-up
parcels of farmland.
This year the $21 million project and its part-
ners will begin establishing these stepping-
stones and reintroducing lynx to two new
Spanish locations, in Granada and Murcia.For Iberian lynx to
fully recover, they
must be able to roam
from one group to
another. That would
ensure diversified
gene pools.
106 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC