The Iberian lynx wears its identity plainly: a spotted tawny coat, black brushes on the ear tips, a bearded ruff, and a short tail with a black tassel.Source 1
It is a specialist to the point of dependence: rabbits are about ninety percent of everything it eats.Source 1
When disease crashed the rabbit populations, the lynx crashed with them. By 2002, ninety-four individuals were left.Source 2Source 3
It was, in those years, the most endangered cat on Earth.Source 4
The rescue was unglamorous and total: rabbits restored, private estates enrolled, breeding centers built, road underpasses dug and fenced.Source 2Source 5Source 3
More than four hundred captive-bred lynx have been released into Spain and Portugal since 2010.Source 3
Mothers den in hollow cork-oak trunks, shuttling their kittens between hidden bush dens until they emerge at two months.Source 4
The 2023 census counted 2,021 lynx — 722 of them cubs.Source 6
In June 2024 the IUCN moved it from Endangered to Vulnerable: the greatest recovery of a cat species conservation has ever achieved.Source 3
It is not finished — full recovery needs 750 breeding females and the count stands at 406 — but to witness the Iberian lynx is to watch a comeback still gaining ground.Source 6
