The population of the protected species is slowly growing thanks to specific programmes such as the Andalusian regional government’s captive breeding scheme and the Life Lynx Connect project.
The Iberian lynx population has grown again as Granadilla, an 11-year-old female born in captivity and released in the Guarrizas area, has recently given birth to six kittens, according to the Andalusian regional government.
Regional government representatives posted videos of the tiny new kittens on social media, stressing that such a large litter had never been registered in Andalusia before, not even in breeding centres.
The mother was born in the Olivilla breeding centre run by the Andalusian government in Jaen. She is the founding female of the Guarrizas area’s lynx colony and has produced kittens in the same area for three years in a row now. Granadilla and her sister Grazalema were the first lynx to be born in captivity and reintroduced into the wild under the regional government’s captive breeding programme, and Granizo, a male from the Andújar-Cardeña colony, was moved to accompany them.
The pair first bred in 2012, and apart from in 2014, Granadilla has had kittens every year since. Initially, the female lynx chose natural caves in the area to give birth in, but in 2019 there were heavy rains and she moved her kittens to a straw barn to keep them dry. Last year, probably due to the sense of security and the dry, peaceful conditions in the barn, she returned there to give birth and kept her kittens there for about a month and a half. This time, she has chosen another, similar barn in which to have her litter this year.
📽️ 'Granadilla', una hembra de #LinceIbérico cien por cien andaluza, ha dado a luz nada menos que a 6 cachorros en el pajar de una finca de #Jaén, en en entorno del río Guarrizas. Sin duda, son unas imágenes preciosas. Y es que #Andalucía no deja de sorprender #RevoluciónVerde pic.twitter.com/RaHgLcLizW
— Carmen Crespo (@CarmenCrespoPP) March 12, 2021
The struggle to re-introduce the Iberian Lynx into the wild has been underway now for nearly twenty years, and is frequently hampered by hunters and road accidents, but slowly, slowly, the number of breeding pairs is growing.
The Life Lynx Connect programme is a complex, transnational one in which the environmental authorities from 2 countries (Spain and Portugal) and 4 Spanish regions (Andalusia, Castilla- La Mancha, Extremadura, and Murcia) are taking part together with public and private companies and NGOs from the environmental sector and a foundation within the hunting sector. Its main goal is to achieve a self-sustainable and genetically viable population by consolidating the subpopulations currently in existence: two in Andalusia, two in Castilla La Mancha, one in Extremadura, and one in Portugal. It is implementing various actions based mainly on the genetic management of the species, developing tools to facilitate this management and make it sustainable in the long term.
There are many obstacles in the smooth progress of this project, the number of animals killed in road accidents and by hunters (there have been many reports of lynx having been shot to death, the most recent just last week in Doñana (Huelva) when a lynx’s body was found floating in a river with bullet wounds to the shoulder) the biggest issues faced in the re-introduction programme. Significant work has been undertaken to create safe “corridors” to enable the lynx to live in areas divided by major road connections and to ensure work within the hunting community doesn´t bring the animals into conflictive competition over the supply of their principal food source; rabbits.
Saving this magnificent native species from oblivion in the wild is a slow fight against the imprint of humanity, but so much resource is dedicated to making this programme a success, that hopes remain high that the lynx can successfully re-establish sufficient numbers to ensure its survival in the future.
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