The Portuguese government will invest €500,000 to rebuild parts of the lynx reproduction centre in Silves which was damaged by the raging wildfire that ripped through parts of Monchique, Silves and Portimão at the start of the month.
The centre’s 29 lynx had to be evacuated on August 8 to another centre in Spain where they will remain until the Silves centre is rebuilt and once again able to home the big cats.
Minister of Environment João Matos Fernandes visited the centre on Monday and said his goal was to launch a tender for the works soon so that they can begin by the end of September or start of October, in order to have the lynx back home by November.
The priority is to recover the areas where the lynx live, described as “large areas surrounded by fences where their natural habitat is recreated”.
Time is of the essence, the minister stressed, as the plan is to release the animals back into nature at the start of the 2019 and they still have to undergo training to survive in the wild.
Rodrigo Serra, head of the centre, told reporters that six of the lynx that were evacuated were already being trained and are continuing to receive training in Spain, where they are being kept for now.
He explained that it is important to stick to the deadlines as lynx usually give birth starting in March, which means that the centre cannot be filled with animals that are due to be released into the wild.
That is why it is so important to have the centre working at full steam again as fast as possible.
Out of the €500,000 the government will provide, €150,000 will go towards rebuilding the fences that were destroyed by flames, €100,000 will be invested in installing CCTV cameras to observe the animals and another €150,000 will be channeled into works to recover other infrastructures that were burnt down or damaged.
Finally, around €100,000 will be used to carry out a number of improvements, “such as the purchase of new equipment”.
The emergency plan that was implemented by the centre was praised by the minister, as all animals were evacuated in due time and none of the records that were kept throughout the last 10 years were lost.
“An operation of this kind is always risky. And, in fact, capturing 29 animals in just 24 hours is hard, as each capture depends heavily on the personality of the animal. Some we can catch by hand as they were bottle-fed. Others which came from the wild are a bit harder,” explained Serra.
Despite the existence of an emergency plan, Serra said, “we were lucky. We caught the easier animals first without anesthesia, and then the other animals reacted well to the anesthesia and everything went well”.
If the attempts to capture the animals had not gone so well, the last resort would have been to release them so that they could “run away from the flames”.
Although many areas where the lynx reside were affected, none of the buildings were seriously affected.
However, Serra says it is sad to see the reproduction centre without any animals.
“For those of us who work here, it is very hard to see it empty. But we are aware that we did our job. We saved all the animals and no one was hurt,” added the director of the centre.
“We haven’t stopped. My team has been exemplary. There were people on holiday who came back to help us.”
Written by michael.bruxo@algarveresident.com
Article by kind permission of http://portugalresident.com
