Iberian lynx saved from extinction... for now

Thanks to captive breeding programmes, and tender loving care, there are now more than 2,000 of these carnivores — Europe’s rarest mammal — in the wild

Iberian lynx rebounding thanks to conservation action. Image: IUCN

Europe’s rarest mammal, the Iberian lynx, has been saved from extinction. This elusive cat had looked like becoming ‘the missing lynx’. It disappeared from Portugal in the 1990s, when fewer than a hundred remained in two areas of northwest Spain.

Thanks to captive breeding programmes, and tender loving care, there are now more than 2,000 of these carnivores in the wild. Last June, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature changed the Iberian’s conservation status from ‘Endangered’ to ‘Vulnerable’. The sick mammal of Europe is out of intensive care.