THE BEAUTIFUL AND TERRIBLY ENDANGERED IBERIAN LYNX
Some time ago I wrote an article about Spain, rabbits and the Iberian Lynx. You may recall that the article largely revolved around the question of how Spain (España) got its name and how there is some evidence to suggest that the name of Spain originally derived from the Phoenician for ‘Land of Rabbits’.
In any event, I touched on the tragedy of the Iberian lynx which is the most endangered species of cat in the world and the most endangered carnivore in Europe. This is a real tragedy with the Iberian Lynx having dropped in number from something like 3,000 in the 1960s to a mere 150 in 2005 and some 250 possibly now alive in the wild.
Of course, such tiny numbers mean that the species is, in theory at least doomed to extinction if for no better reason than lack of genetic diversity.
Well, a couple of weeks ago, I saw an article on the BBC which challenges this assumption. Indeed, to quote the BBC article:
‘…new research suggests that the lynx has had little genetic variability over the last 50,000 years, and this has not hampered its long-term survival.‘
This is excellent news and may suggest that the conservation work being undertaken with the few remaining breeding Iberian Lynxes in Spain may just work, long term.
Nick Snelling – Culture Spain