Folkloric and a national symbol: saving the Balkan Lynx

May 29, 2018 by Briseida Mema

Only about 40 Balkan Lynxes still roam the mountains of Albania and neighbouring Macedonia

In Albania, legend has it that staring into the almond-shaped eyes of the Balkan Lynx renders you blind.

But today, sightings of the rare wildcat have become so unlikely that conservationists have raised a red flag about its future.

Only about 40 individuals of the animal still roam the mountains of Albania and neighbouring Macedonia, according to estimates by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which in 2015 classed the "Lynx lynx balcanicus" as critically endangered.

Since 2006 a regional initiative has been under way aimed at preventing the lynx from becoming extinct.

Now, Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro are all part of the programme to expand protection zones for the Balkan Lynx, raise awareness, especially among youngsters, and combat deforestation and poaching.

It is a challenge, but there are signs of hope.

Sightings

"This lynx was spotted on April 16 at 3:50 a.m.", says Aleksander Trajce, head of Protection and Preservation of Natural Environment in Albania.

Examining the photograph of what looks like a big spotted cat with very pointed ears walking in the snow through the night, his excitement is obvious.

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Cub photo raises hope for Europe’s rarest and largest wild cat

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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Macedonia dam faces the axe over risk of Balkan lynx extinction

Controversial €100m hydropower project likely to lose funding after Bern Convention warns of ‘decisive negative impact’ on the critically endangered lynx

Arthur Neslen

Friday 30 October 2015 11.11 GMTLast modified on Friday 30 October 201511.35 GMT

A controversial €100m (£71m) dam project in a Macedonian national park is expected to be scrapped after independent experts called for a halt to all funding and construction work because of risks to critically endangered species, including the Balkan lynx.

A Bern Convention mission to the Mavrovo national park reported that the planned hydropower dam there was “not compatible” with protection of the park’s status, ecosystems or species.

The European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has put up €65m in loans for the project but its environmental guidelines forbid the funding of projects prohibited by the Bern Convention, a legally-binding pact between 51 states.

If the report is approved by its standing committee in December – usually a formality – the EBRD will then have no option but to pull out of the project.

A bank spokesperson declined to comment until the committee’s vote. But Ivana D’Alessandro, the secretary of the Bern Convention warned that they should be prepared to reconsider their funding.

“If I was a decision-maker in the EBRD I would really think carefully about the next step,” she told the Guardian. “It would not be good for the bank’s image to finance something which 51 countries, with scientists and policy-makers, consider dangerous for biodiversity.”

D’Alessandro added that the draft recommendations would almost certainly be adopted, putting “political pressure” on Macedonia – a signatory – to find another location for the dam, not least because the secretariat would now be monitoring the park’s situation.

“It seems that we are on the verge of a historic success in the fight against hydro dams in Mavrovo national park,” said Ulrich Eichelmann, the founder of River Watch, an Austrian NGO that campaigns on this issue. “It is very important for all the national parks under threat from these types of project.”

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