Actions
LIFE LYNXCONNECT will implement 33 actions designed to efficiently achieve the project’s objectives.
Although many of these actions are transversal, helping to achieve more than one objective, in general they can be grouped in five blocks:
To increase the global population size
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- To review the working protocols to be implemented in LYNXCONNECT in order to maximize the efficiency of the actions and to achieve the demographic and connectivity parameters needed for the future metapopulation to be self-sustainable.
- Habitat management will be carried out to maximise the efficiency of contingency plans in case of sudden drops in rabbit populations. This is essential to get stakeholders involved.
- Releases of captive-born and translocation of lynxes in incipient nuclei for reinforcement, in the stepping stones for dispersal and in the two new nuclei.
- To correct high priority blackspots in order to make road-crossing safe in connection areas. We will also monitor the effectiveness of those correction structures in order to maintain acceptable values of non-natural mortality due to roadkills.
- To implement measures to reduce poaching by preventing conflicts and by fostering the awareness and involvement of landowners and hunters.
- A sanitary monitoring program will avoid outbreaks of important felid diseases.
- Monitoring will cover every nuclei using both traditional and innovative methods, such as genetic monitoring.
To preserve genetic diversity and prevent inbreeding
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- Connectivity. Selection of the optimal stepping stones and preparation a model of agreement with landowners.
- Genetic Monitoring. It will provide annual information about the genetic status of each nuclei in order to reconstruct the census and the genealogy of each nuclei which will be used to implement, for the first time, an integral genetic management of the species at an individual level.
- Genetic management: Selection of founders, prioritization of breeders, and design of optimal mating schemes in captivity, by selecting optimal captive-born individuals for release on each nuclei, and by selecting individuals to translocate among wild populations.
Public awareness and dissemination
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- Design and creation of a webpage and a photo identification software.
- A teacher-training programme will introduce Iberian Lynx conservation issues in formal education and other educational activities as driving, hunting and farming.
- A program to exchange teenagers between rural and urban areas will contribute to increase awareness from the empathy.
- 20 podcast about different Iberian Lynx issues will be generated to distribute them for free in the radio stations.
Project management
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- A dedicated office running by skilled professionals will coordinate beneficiaries actions from a financial and technical point of view, solving beneficiaries questions, centralizing communication tasks, ensuring the correct implementation of actions, gathering the data generated and elaborating reports.
- An internal Beneficiaries Communication Plan will ensure a quick and precise information flow between all project’s partners.
Innovative actions aiming at increasing efficiency of monitoring
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- A web-based tool for the long-term genetic monitoring and management of the IbLx population will be developed and implemented as an online platform to store, analyse and share genetic information.
- A study on the role of the scent marks in IbLx behaviour will be conducted.
- Radio-tracking methods will be improved with adapted drones, fixed antennas and LoRa technology.
- A canine team of trained dogs will be created, that will facilitate collecting scats in the field, and to confirm the presence of lynxes in different scenarios.
