The Iberian Lynx, Europe's Big Cat, Faces Extinction
11/12/99
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Title: Europe's big cat faces extinction
Source: The Times (London)
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: November 12, 1999
Byline: Nick Nuttal
THE Iberian lynx, the world's most endangered big cat, has fallen in
number by half in the past decade, surveys show. But a plan to save
the species from extinction is fatally flawed, conservationists say.
Surveys in Spain, the animal's last stronghold, indicate that the
lynx is down to just 600 animals, with some estimates at only 400.
Surveys in 1988 put the number at 1,150.
Lucy Farmer of the World Wide Fund for Nature said yesterday that the
lynx's plight was even more desperate that its cousin, the tiger.
"There are more tigers in captivity than there are in the wild now.
But there are only four Iberian lynx in captivity and they are all
female and one is considered too old to mate anyway. So there is no
reservoir for this species or a source of captively bred lynx," Ms
Farmer said. The group, along with other conservationists and
scientists, has been pinning its hopes on a European scheme in which
a network of conservation areas is to be set up in Spain to protect
and boost the lynx's precarious population.
But the World Wide Fund for Nature said that the sites earmarked
under the EU's Natura 2000 programme cover only 60 per cent of the
cat's habitats and exclude key areas as well as corridors linking the
fragmented lynx population.
It also claims that several sites are threatened by road and dam
projects, deer fencing and forest tracks.
The cat's decline is linked with changes in agriculture and snaring
on shooting estates which are patronised by British and other
international guests.