Saving a species: Slow return of the Iberian lynx

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

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.

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

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.

“The only feline species that was threatened at this level was the sabre tooth tiger thousands of years ago.”

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.

Wild rabbits are essential prey for the lynx and two pandemics led to a 95% fall in their number.

By 2005, Portugal had no lynxes left, but it was also the year that Spain saw the first litter born in captivity.

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.

Here they are monitored 24 hours a day. The aim is twofold – to prepare them for life in the wild and to pair them for reproduction.

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.

Sometimes, though, stress is exactly what the lynxes need.