(NewsNation) — One of the world’s rarest cats, the Iberian lynx, is no longer classified as endangered, according to a report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Wildlife experts are calling the recovery of the Iberian Lynx unparalleled among felines in an age of extinction in which species are vanishing at a rate not seen in 10 million years due to climate change, pollution and habitat loss.
The wild cat used to be common across the whole of the Iberian Peninsula — Spain and Portugal, but from the 1960s its numbers plummeted.
In 2001, there were just 62 adult Iberian Lynx scattered across Meditteranean forests, but the population jumped to around 648 in 2022, the IUCN said Thursday. Today, the population has risen to more than 2,000, counting both young and adult lynxes across a range of thousands of kilometers covering rocky mountainous areas and valleys.
Francisco Javier Salcedo Ortiz, Coordinator of the LIFE Lynx-Connect project, which led the conservation action for the Iberian lynx called it “the greatest recovery of a cat species ever achieved through conservation” and praised a range of actors including landowners, farmers, hunters and the European Union which provided financial and logistical support.
Efforts have focused on increasing the abundance of its prey, a species of wild rabbit which is also endangered, programs to free hundreds of captive lynxes and restoring scrublands and forests. However, IUCN warned that gains could be reversed and said that threats included diseases from domestic cats and among the European rabbit population it feeds on as well as poaching and road kill.
“Looking ahead, there are plans to reintroduce the Iberian lynx to new sites in central and northern Spain,” said Ortiz, saying there is a lot of work to do to ensure the animal survives and the species recovers fully.