 |
 |
 |
Enhance your computer
desktop with the FREE
big cats screen saver! |
|
|
|
 |
 |
| Scientific Name: Lynx pardinus |
Size: Head and body 33.5-43 inches
(85-110cm);
tail 4.5-5 inches (12-13cm) |
| Weight: 22-28.5 pounds (10-13kg) |
| Distribution: Southwestern Spain and
Portugal |
| Habitat: Wooded hill country and mountainous
regions, also sand dunes and scrubland of the lowlands. |
| Diet: Rabbits and hares, squirrels,
small deer, ground birds, water-fowel, fish and large insects. |
| Reproduction: After a gestation period
of about 9 weeks, female gives birth to 2-3 kittens. |
| Status: Critically
Endangered |
|
|
| Also known as the Spanish Lynx, Pardel
Lynx, Pardine Lynx or the South European Lynx, this has been described as Europe's
most endangered carnivore. The Iberian Lynx is a medium-sized cat with long legs,
a short tail, big tufted ears, and a conspicuous throat-ruff. It is a solitary,
terrestrial, nocturnal hunter of rabbits and hares, also squirrels, small deer,
ground birds, water-fowel, fish, and large insects. It occupies extensive territories
in wooded hill country and mountainous regions, and is also occasionally found
among the sand dunes and scrubland of the lowlands. This species differs from
the Eurasian Lynx in both size |
 |
|
and
markings. It is smaller and more heavily spotted than the cold-country lynx (Lynx
lynx) that inhabits Scandinavia, northern Russia, and right across the Siberian
wastelands.
Breeding takes place in the early part of the year, when females come into heat
and begin to wander through the homes ranges of the nearby males. When giving
birth, the female retreats to a rock cavity, a dense thicket, or a hollow tree.
Breeding has been savagely curtailed in the past century, thanks to human sportsman,
furtraders, and agriculturists.
With the population declined to less than half of the 1,200 in the early 1990s,
the Iberian Lynx is close to becoming the first wild cat species to go extinct
for at least 2,000 years. Based on estimates of density and geographic range (Nowell
and Jackson 1996), the total effective population size of the Iberian lynx is
estimated at 250 mature breeding individuals, with a declining trend due to habitat
and prey base loss and persecution, and no subpopulation containing more than
50 mature breeding individuals.
There has been much argument about whether the Iberian Lynx is really a separate
species from the Eurasian Lynx. The problem
lies in what happened in the middle European zone, between the frozen north and
the sunny south, before mankind arrived and obliterated the natural habitats there.
All the Lynxes from that intermediate area have long since been exterminated and
there is now a huge geographical gap between the big Northern Eurasian and small
Iberian species. We will never know whether, when they met in the past, somewhere
in the middle, they graded gently from one form to the other, or whether they
overlapped and never interbred. Without that information we can only guess. At
least, by considering them as separate species, it is possible to put greater
pressure on authorities to protect the rare Iberian form. If it is merely a race
of the Northern Eurasian species, then it is of far less interest in terms of
"endangered species." And it needs all the help it can get, if it is
to survive. |
| IBERIAN
LYNK PHOTOS |
|
 |
| |
| |
|
