Good news is rare when looking up the conservation status of endangered cats, but this terrific: From being the only Critically Endangered cat on the IUCN Red List in 2008, with as few as fifty individuals left in the wild, Iberian lynxes (autotranslated) rebounded by 2015, dropping a notch down in IUCN assessment of extinction risk to Endangered, with an estimated wild population in 2022 of almost 1,400.
This is still very bad, but the cats are no longer poised on the edge of an extinction vortex.
Yay!
With a successful step like this, it is not off-putting to see shots of talking heads and people in meetings in this series of videos (English language) from Life+IBERLINCE called “The Path of the Lynx” (there are plenty of furry little bearded cat goblins in it, too):
More information:
- Cat Specialist Group page.
- Mongabay 2021 story on the relative comeback.
- Traffic lights, too! (Sadly, I could not find videos of them.)
Some lagniappe:
Meanwhile, in North America, Fluffy and Bob meet:
Featured image: Ondrej Prosicky/Shutterstock
Flight To Wonder 