FEATURE - Spain fights to save world's most endangered cat
Date: 06-Jun-02
Country: SPAIN
Author: Daniel Flynn
For these two muddy brown bundles of fur, each little bigger than a kitten and curled up next to one another for protection, are Iberian Lynxes - the world4s most endangered feline.
Nestling on a tree stump in a special enclosure at Jerez de la Frontera zoo in southern Spain, the two-month-old baby females are the focus of an emergency breeding plan to prevent the Iberian Lynx from becoming the first feline species to become extinct since prehistoric times.
"When we brought them here a month ago they weighed about 600 grams each and were covered in ticks," said Maribel Molla, the veterinary surgeon raising the cubs. "Since then we fed them on milk, diced rabbit and dead rats and they weigh over two kilos (4.5 lb)."
Until recently it was believed that some 1,000 Iberian lynxes - distant cousins of the American bobcat - prowled the grasslands of southern and central Spain and Portugal. Only in the last year have more rigorous tests shown how rare they really are.
It is now thought that only 150 to 200 survive, with just two populations large enough to sustain themselves - in the scrubland of the Donana national park on Spain4s southern coast and in the Sierra Morena mountains 200 kilometres (125 miles) to the north.
"This is such a beautiful animal and so symbolic for Spain," said Inego Sanchez, the director of Jerez zoo and head of the breeding programme. "We are losing the pride of Spanish nature."
PROGRAMME UNDER WAY
Half the size of its Eurasian cousin, the solitary and nocturnal Iberian lynx prefers scrubland to forest habitat and feeds almost exclusively on rabbits. With a yellow coat dotted with deep brown spots, adult lynxes can live to 15 and grow to the size of a house dog, some 13 kg (28 lb).
Since the 1950s, Spain's lynxes have been decimated because of the introduction to Europe of myxomatosis, a fatal viral disease which wiped out most of the rabbits they feed on, leading many lynxes to starve.
The Iberian lynx has been classed as endangered since the 1970s, but awareness of its plight remained low until recently.
"There was a lack of coordination between regional administrations, some competition among the environmental agencies and some jealousy," said Sanchez.
Worried that one of its national emblems could disappear, Spain this year unveiled an eight million euro ($7.35 million) plan to save the lynx, with the cooperation of the European Union and environmental groups such as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
The plan required local governments to protect the lynx's territory from roads, ensure fresh water sources and foster the rabbit population. It also established a programme of breeding in captivity, headed by Jerez zoo with the aim of replenishing lynx numbers in the wild.
Aura and Saliega in April were the first cubs to be taken from a brood in the wild, but conservationists quickly realised their bad luck.
"We have a little problem. There are only four Iberian lynxes in captivity in the world, and they are all females," said 35-year-old Sanchez, in the searing heat of the Andalusian sun. "We urgently need males".
Apart from a 13-year-old female who is now too old to mate and the two baby girls, who are still too young, conservationists have only one other female lynx which they found half-starved last year in the Donana park.
"We have called her Esperanza (hope in Spanish) because we hoped she would be the first female Iberian lynx to breed in captivity - and we still have that hope," said Sanchez.
Now the search is on for males. Conservationists at Jerez plan to continue taking young cubs from litters to bolster the breeding programme, as from a typical brood of four lynx cubs only two will survive at best.
But finding litters may not be that easy. Like most big cats, Iberian lynxes are extremely solitary animals and come together only when it is time to mate. Even people who live all their lives in an area with a lynx population may never see one.