13 June 2017
By Maria Bolevich
A first cub photo in over a
decade of Europe’s largest and rarest cat, a wild Balkan lynx, raises hopes for
the surival of this critically endangered animal.
With less than 50 cats remaining
in the wild in the mountains of the Western Balkans, this subspecies of the
eurasian lynx is close to extinction.
The lynx faces habitat
loss, illegal hunting, and revenge killing by farmers whose domestic animals
they sometimes attack.
Just two years ago a cub was
stoned by a local shepherd on Munella mountain in Albania — the only recent
evidence of this subspecies rearing young.
Fight for survival
The biggest challenge is the
population’s small size and low survival of cubs, says Mareike Brix from EuroNatur, who have been working on the
protection of Balkan lynx for a decade with their partners. “Only 25 per cent
of all kittens born reach adulthood,“ says Brix.
But now, a picture of a new live
cub has been captured in a second location, the Mavrovo National Park in
neighbouring Macedonia, suggesting there is a healthy reproducing population
there.
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