Sixteen Iberian lynx are living in the wild in Portugal, free to roam and pounce, as three more have been released in the Alentejo, according to the Institute for Nature and Forest Conservation.
The three lucky lynx, now free to enjoy a life of roaming the hills and avoiding the roads, were released in the Guadiana Valley Natural Park in the Mértola area. Two females Mesquita and Malva, and a male called Mel will now be tracked by the Life+Iberlince project team.
The latest releases were born in the spring 2015 and will be tracked, as are the others. The programme is all part of a wider project to reintroduce the Iberian lynx to is traditional hunting grounds in Spain and Portugal.
This is a cross border project but the number of lynx killed by vehicles in Spain has risen since 2008 when just two were reported dead on the nation’s roads. By 2014 the total had reached 22 dead which shows that numbers are rising significantly, only to be killed in collisions.
Last summer, two lynx from the Silves breeding centre, brothers Kahn and Kentaro, were released in the middle of Spain near Toledo.
One ended up 500 kilometres away enjoying the vineyards of Rioja while Khan headed home to Portugal swimming across the Tagus and Guadiana rivers and become rather a national hero.
Kahn’s incredible journey of more than 500 kilometres was tracked by a GPS device attached to special collar as part of the Life+Iberlince project.
Kahn arrived home at the end of May and the project coordinators said the journeys the pair undertook, albeit in opposite directions, is nothing unusual for the species which are adept at surviving in mountainous and inhospitable terrain.
Stage one of the release programme started in December 2014 and ran until May 2015 with ten lynx freed in the Mértola municipality, nine of which are still alive after "Kayakweru" was found poisoned last month. There are now sixteen lynx known to be free and still in the area.
The breeding centre in Silves was built and is funded by Aguas de Algarve as a condition of the permission granted to build the Odelouca dam.
