Navarro – a male lynx – with his leopard-like spots, screams during mating season as he walks towards a photo trap.
The Iberian lynx is less than 100 cm (39 in) long and 45 cm tall and is a rare sight. But there are now more than 2,000 of them in the wild across Spain and Portugal, so you’re much more likely to see them than 20 years ago.
“The Iberian lynx was very, very close to extinction,” says Rodrigo Serra, who manages the breeding program in Spain and Portugal.
At its lowest point, there were less than 100 lynx left in the two non-interacting populations, and only 25 of these were reproductive-age females.
“The only feline species that was threatened at this level was the saber-toothed tiger thousands of years ago.”
The decline in the lynx population was partly due to more and more land being used for agriculture, increasing road deaths and the struggle for food.
Wild rabbits are important prey for the lynx, and two pandemics have caused their numbers to drop by 95%.
Until 2005 not a single lynx remained in Portugal, but it was also the year Spain had its first litter born in captivity.
It took another three years before Portugal decided to adopt a national action plan for the conservation of the species. The National Iberian Lynx Breeding Center was built in Silves in the Algarve.
Here they are watched 24 hours a day. The aim is twofold – to prepare them for life in the wild and to pair them for breeding.
Sulfur speaks in a whisper, because even from a distance of 200 meters you can cause stress in the animals in the 16 pens where most of the animals are kept.
Sometimes, however, stress is just what lynxes need.
