With his leopard-like spots, Navarro – a male lynx – calls out during mating season as he walks towards a camera trap.
At just under 100 cm (39 inches) long and 45 cm tall, the Iberian lynx is a rare sight. But now there are more than 2,000 of them in the wild across Spain and Portugal, so you’re much more likely to see them than 20 years ago.
“The Iberian lynx was very, very close to extinction,” says Rodrigo Serra, who runs a breeding program across Spain and Portugal.
At its lowest point, there were fewer than 100 lynx left in the two non-interacting populations, and only 25 of those were females of reproductive age.
“The only cat species that was threatened at this level was the saber-toothed tiger several thousand years ago.”
The decline in the lynx population is partly due to the increasing use of land for agriculture, an increase in road deaths and the struggle for food.
Wild rabbits are essential prey for lynxes, and two pandemics have caused their numbers to drop by 95%.
By 2005, there were no more lynx in Portugal, but that was also the year Spain saw its 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 Iberian lynx breeding center was built in Silves in the Algarve.
Here they are under surveillance 24 hours a day. The goal 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 200 meters you can cause stress in the animals in the 16 boxes where most of the animals are.
However, sometimes stress is just what lynxes need.
“When we notice that the litter is getting a little more confident, we go in and chase them and make noise so they get spooked again and climb the fences,” Serra says. “We train them not to approach humans in the wild.”
This is partly for their own protection, but also to stay away from humans and their animals. “A lynx should be a lynx, not be treated like a house cat.”
So lynxes never associate food with humans, they feed through a tunnel system in the center.
Then, when the time comes, they are released into the wild.
Genetics determine where they will end up, to reduce the risk of inbreeding or disease. Even if the lynx was born in Portugal, it could be taken to Spain.
Pedro Sarmento is responsible for reintroducing the lynx to Portugal and has been studying the Iberian lynx for 30 years.
“As a biologist, there are two things that strike me when I deal with the lynx. It is an animal with a fairly small head in relation to its body and extremely wide paws. This gives them impulse and the ability to jump, which is rare.”
The breeding program and the return of the lynxes have been hailed as great successes, but as their numbers grow, problems could arise.
As lynx are often released on private land in Portugal, the organizers of the reproduction program must first reach an agreement with the owners.
Where the animals go after that is up to them, and while there have been some attacks on chicken coops, Sarmento says there haven’t been many.
“This can lead to discomfort among the local population. We have reinforced the chicken coops so that the lynxes cannot access them, and in some cases we continue to monitor the lynxes and scare them if necessary.”
He recounts the story of Lítio, one of the first lynx released in Portugal.
For six months, Lítio stayed in the same area, but then the team lost track of him.
Finally, he headed to Doñana, the national park in southern Spain where he came from.
As Lítio was ill, he was treated and then returned to the breeding team in the Algarve.
A few days after he was released from the center, he began to return to Doñana, swimming across the Guadiana River to reach Spain.
He disappeared for a while, but was eventually returned to the Algarve.
When he was released for the third time, Lítio did not dare to return to Spain, but instead walked 3 km (two miles), found a female and did not move again.
“He’s the oldest lynx we have here and has had many cubs since then,” says Sarmento.
Three decades after Spain decided to save the lynx, the species is no longer endangered, and Sarmento hopes to achieve favorable conservation status by 2035.
For this to happen, the number needs to reach 5000-6000 in the wild.
“I’ve seen species disappear. It’s surreal that we’re in a place where we can see lynx in nature or through cameras almost every day,” says Sarmento.
The reproduction team is not complacent and their work carries risks. Last year, 80% of lynx deaths occurred on roads.
For now, however, they are convinced that the Iberian lynx has been saved.
