Iberian Lynx

Iberian Lynx: Species Facts

Range & Habitat

The Iberian lynx is found only in the Iberian Peninsula. According to the 2024 Spain–Portugal conservation strategy, its current range is restricted to the south-west of the peninsula, in Spain and Portugal, and covered more than 4,500 km² in 2022. Its optimal habitat is Mediterranean woodland and scrub, although it can also live among rocky outcrops, secondary scrub, scattered woodland such as olive groves or dehesas with patches of scrub, and riverside vegetation.^[2]

It is a specialist predator of the European rabbit. The 2024 strategy says rabbit makes up between 70 % and 97 % of the biomass the lynx eats, and that rabbit abundance is the factor that most determines whether lynx are present and how well they breed. The LIFE LynxConnect project describes the lynx as a habitat and prey specialist that, when rabbits come out to feed, can reach them without being seen or heard.^[2][6]

It is territorial and mainly nocturnal and crepuscular, with seasonal variation. According to the 2024 strategy, its home range covers between 4 and 20 km², depending on rabbit abundance and the animal's sex; LIFE LynxConnect adds that adult females defend the smallest territory that will feed them and their cubs, so the more rabbits a habitat holds, the smaller the territory. The pattern of spots is unique to each individual, which is what allows lynx to be identified and counted.^[2][6]

The 2024 strategy places the largest and most diverse nucleus in eastern Sierra Morena, formed by the remnant population of Andújar-Cardeña, one of the two places where the lynx never disappeared, and three reintroduced nuclei in the Guadalmellato and Guarrizas valleys and the south of Ciudad Real. MITECO's report on the 2025 census counted 1,145 lynx in Sierra Morena, in nuclei shared by Andalucía (613 in the eastern Sierra Morena nuclei of Jaén and Córdoba and 61 in Sierra Morena connecting areas) and Castilla-La Mancha (471 in several nuclei in the provinces of Ciudad Real and Albacete).^[1][2]

In June 2026, Spain's environment ministry (MITECO) reported that the 2025 census of Spain and Portugal counted 2,663 Iberian lynx, a new maximum since coordinated monitoring began: 2,269 in Spain and 394 in Portugal, made up of 1,711 adults or subadults and 952 cubs, with 542 breeding or territorial females. The census was compiled by the Iberian lynx working group coordinated by MITECO, with the Spanish regional governments and Portugal's Instituto da Conservação da Natureza e das Florestas (ICNF). MITECO notes that, as the population grows, it is ever harder to identify every animal, so the 2025 figures should be taken as a minimum number of lynx.^[1]

Earlier figures, for the record: 2,401 lynx in 2024 and 1,365 in 2021, according to MITECO's 2026 report; 1,668 in 2022, according to the 2024 strategy. In 2002 the first peninsula-wide census with direct methods found two isolated nuclei, Doñana and eastern Sierra Morena (Andújar-Cardeña), with about 100 lynx older than one year (range 84–143).^[1][2]

Threats

Road traffic. MITECO recorded 273 lynx deaths in 2025, 212 of them (77.9 %) road kills on roads and other transport infrastructure. The 2024 strategy names road kills and illegal persecution as the leading causes of death over the last decade, both of human origin, and describes three likely risk situations on roads: resident lynx with roads in their territories, lynx hunting rabbits drawn to warrens on road verges, and young or recently released lynx crossing roads as they disperse.^[1][2]

Illegal killing. According to the 2024 strategy, during the LIFE Iberlince project (2011–2018) the overall annual mortality rate was 20 %; road kills accounted for 32 % of deaths and illegal persecution for 24 %. Almost all road-killed lynx are found, but only an estimated 30 % of illegal killings are detected, so the strategy warns against judging the importance of each cause from detected cases alone. The strategy links illegal persecution to retaliation for attacks on poultry or lambs, to game-estate management using non-selective predator control (traps, snares and poison), and to shooting.^[2]

The decline of the rabbit. The 2024 strategy calls the lynx's dependence on rabbit a limiting factor. Rabbit numbers in the Iberian Peninsula have fallen since the 1950s, mainly because of viral diseases, from myxomatosis in the 1950s to a new strain known as GI.2 that appeared in 2011, with mortality that can reach 90 %. GI.2 caused a sharp fall in rabbit densities, which reduced the productivity of female lynx and the survival of juveniles and cubs.^[2]

Loss and fragmentation of habitat. The 2024 strategy lists habitat loss to agricultural, industrial and urban development, the intensification or abandonment of farming, lack of connectivity and climate change, and calls the loss and degradation of habitat the main long-term threat for a specialist of Mediterranean woodland and scrub.^[2]

Low genetic diversity and disease. The 2024 strategy says the genetic variability of the Iberian lynx today is the lowest reported in any mammal, and that loss of diversity and rising inbreeding have reduced fitness and led to high mortality from disease. Infectious diseases, especially feline leukaemia virus, tuberculosis, distemper and feline parvovirus, have at times been critical in some populations; feline leukaemia virus caused the largest known outbreak, in Doñana in 2007.^[2]

Conservation Status & Work

Lynx pardinus: Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List (global assessment of the species, published in 2024).^[8]

In Spain the Iberian lynx is listed in the category «en peligro de extinción» (in danger of extinction) in the Catálogo Español de Especies Amenazadas, under Real Decreto 139/2011 (consolidated text in the BOE, last updated on 19 October 2026). It is also in Annexes II and IV of the EU Habitats Directive 92/43/EEC, in Appendix II of the Bern Convention and in Appendix I of CITES.^[2][3]

The Strategy for the Conservation of the Iberian Lynx in Spain and Portugal, drawn up by the two countries' Iberian lynx working group, was approved by Spain's Conferencia Sectorial de Medio Ambiente on 24 July 2024. It is presented as the third strategy for Spain, replacing the one approved in 2008, and the first for the species under bilateral cooperation between Spain and Portugal. MITECO says the number of breeding females comes closer each year to 750, the demographic milestone for considering the lynx to be in a favourable conservation status.^[1][2]

A captive breeding programme began in 2004; according to the 2024 strategy it acts as a genetic reserve, an insurance population and a source of animals for reintroduction. MITECO names the breeding centres and who pays for them: Portugal's ICNF at Silves, the Junta de Andalucía at La Olivilla (Jaén), and Spain's national parks agency (OAPN) at Zarza de Granadilla (Cáceres) and El Acebuche (Huelva). Since the first releases of captive-born lynx in 2011, 424 had been reintroduced by 2025. Castilla y León began releasing lynx in the Cerrato Palentino in 2025, and in 2026 the first lynx were reintroduced in the Ebro valley, in the province of Zaragoza, in a project led by the Government of Aragón.^[1][2]

The Doñana nucleus, one of the two that survived, has been genetically rescued by moving lynx from Sierra Morena, according to the 2024 strategy.^[2]

LIFE LynxConnect (2020–2025), coordinated by the Junta de Andalucía's Consejería de Agricultura, Ganadería, Pesca y Desarrollo Sostenible, is the fourth project of the EU LIFE programme approved for the Iberian lynx. It follows LIFE Iberlince (2011–2018) and aims to connect the existing population nuclei so that genes flow between them, and to create two new nuclei, in Sierra Arana (Granada) and the Altos de Lorca (Murcia). Its partners include environmental and road authorities in Spain and Portugal, conservation NGOs, the hunting sector and private companies, with scientific support from the Doñana Biological Station (CSIC).^[4][5][7]