An Iberian lynx released by the Iberlince project in Portugal was detected in the Barcelona metropolitan area

On Tuesday, May 29th, technicians of the Catalunya Generalitat’s Rural Agents body detected and photographed an Iberian lynx (Lynx pardinus) specimen in the Barcelona metropolitan area, in a search operation carried out following several notifications of sightings of the animal in the area. This is the first time that an Iberian lynx has been detected in Catalonia since the beginning of the 20th century.

From these images, specialists of the Fauna and Flora Service of the Generalitat were able to identify this Iberian lynx specimen, thanks to the tracking collar that it carried and the collaboration of the species’ reintroduction programs experts in the Iberian Peninsula, as well as those of the Life+Iberlince project.

This is 'Litio', a male released in 2015 in Portugal by the ICNF (Institute for Nature Conservation and Biodiversity) specialists attached to the Iberlince project. Born in 2014 in the El Acebuche Captive Breeding Centre, in Huelva, and captured again on May 5th, 2016, in an estate in Gibraleón (Huelva), upon displaying a state of weakness. For this reason, he was transferred to Huelva’s Endangered Species Recovery Centre (CREA), managed by the Regional Government of Andalusia. Once restored, he was again released in the Vale do Guadiana reintroduction area, in Portugal.

Now, the Generalitat is analysing its recapture in order to change his tracking collar and download the accumulated data, with the support of the Iberlince project specialists and veterinarians, which will allow them to learn about this specimen’s routes in detail.

The Life Iberlince project 'Recovery the historical distribution of the Iberian lynx (Lynx pardinus) in Spain and Portugal', in which four autonomous communities (Extremadura, Castilla-La Mancha, Murcia and Andalusia) and two countries (Spain and Portugal) participate, seeks to recover the species’ historical distribution through the reintroduction of specimens in the six selected areas within the Peninsula. Due to conservation actions developed by the project, the population has increased fivefold in fifteen years; from 94 specimens in 2002 to 589 in 2017, according to last year’s population census data.

Thanks to this Life project, the Iberian lynx has gone from being a 'critically endangered species' to an 'endangered' species (according the IUCN catalogue, the international organism that catalogues threat levels of different species), thus fulfilling its main goal. Once populations are consolidated, the next objective – to be included in a new Life Nature project – will be to achieve connectivity between the different areas in the Peninsula where the Iberian lynx is present.