A study carried out by one of the beneficiary partners of LIFE LYNXCONNECT, the Estación Biológica de Doñana (EBD), an institute belonging to the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), has determined that the Iberian lynx population is not yet fully favourable. The work, published in Animal Conservation, has assessed what conditions are necessary for the population of this animal to be genetically viable in the long term.

Thanks to conservation programmes, mainly LIFE projects, the Iberian lynx population has shown a positive trend in the last decade: the last census https://lifelynxconnect.eu/censos/estimó showed a total of 1,668 individuals in the wild, compared to less than 100 in 2002. Today, in addition to facing numerous threats, such as being run over, the decline of rabbits, habitat fragmentation https://lifelynxconnect.eu/jornadas_desfragmentacion/o and climate change, there is another aspect that puts its recovery at risk: the genetic factor. “The recovery of a species depends not only on absolute population numbers, but also on a minimum genetic variability to ensure its survival. At its most critical moment, there were only two isolated lynx subpopulations in Doñana and Andújar,” explains CSIC researcher at the EBD José A. Godoy. “Today there are five and within the LIFE LYNXCONNECT project we are working on new reintroductions in Sierra Arana and Lorca, but this is still not enough,” he adds.

New actions to improve connectivity – subpopulations should be sufficiently connected to favour genetic exchange between them – are foreseen in the LIFE LYNXCONNECT project. These include the creation of ecological corridors or the establishment of intermediate subpopulations with few reproductive pairs that function as guides to attract dispersing individuals and thus direct them towards the next subpopulation.

We invite you to read it in:

https://doi.org/10.1111/acv.12890