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In a flash, Vírgula bolts from a box and bounds down the hill to freedom. 

With her distinctive pointy ears and dotted brown coat, the Iberian lynx cuts a dashing sight.

The one-year-old female was released on Los Mil Quinientos – a remote country estate in Extremadura in Spain’s far west – on Monday. Her first taste of the wild after having been born in captivity as part of a breeding programme to restore her species. 

That rewilding scheme, which began 20 years ago, closes next year. So the days of lynx releases like Vírgula’s are numbered. 

Saving a species facing extinction

At the turn of this century, the Iberian lynx was on the edge of extinction in Iberia, its numbers decimated by relentless hunting and diseases ravaging its favourite foodstuff: the rabbit.

With less than 100 individuals known to be alive, lynx pardinus was about to share the fate of the dodo. 

So began LIFE Lynx Connect, a multi-million euro project backed by the European Union, the Spanish and Portuguese governments, regional authorities and private companies, which has saved this wild cat. 

Since 2005, lynx have been reared in captivity then released into the wild in areas stocked with rabbits across southern Spain and Portugal.

Initially seen as a pest, conservationists convinced rural communities and hunters that the lynx was actually an asset to the countryside. 

Lynx numbers reached 2,021 according to a 2023 census. From being classed as at risk of extinction, it is now vulnerable, according to an IUCN update from 2024. 

Now the lynx faces an uncertain future

With the LIFE Lynx Connect project coming to an end in 2026, this most photogenic feline faces an uncertain future.

Rewilding of the carnivorous wild cat has met with resistance in Catalonia, Aragon and parts of Castilla y Leon in northern Spain.

Farmers in Zamora, a region famous for its wolf population, do not welcome another predator even though the lynx never kills livestock.

In Aragon, in eastern Spain, the conservative People’s Party rules in conjunction with the hard-right Vox party, which opposes the return of the lynx.

Farmers in Catalonia staged a demonstration with their tractors in February and forced the Catalan regional government to drop plans to bring back the lynx.   

Despite a plague of rabbits devouring crops in agricultural areas like Lleida, farmers believe the lynx would make things worse, even though the rabbit is the feline’s favourite dinner. 

Mar Ariza, a 27-year-old farmer from Revolta Pagesa, points to a 2024 study in the Journal for Nature Conservation, which found that lynx actually increase rabbit populations in some areas.  

The report said lynx act as ‘natural gamekeepers’ – preying on weaker or younger rabbits but not reducing the overall rabbit population. The same study found that lynx reduce red fox, stone marten and other predators. 

Despite the opposition to rewilding the feline, Maria Jesús Palacios, who leads lynx conservation programmes in Extremadura, believes the feline’s future is assured. 

“We have managed to make hunters see that the lynx helps them because it is a super predator and it helps to regulate the countryside by eliminating any other rivals,” she told Euronews Green. 

“When we started this project they did not believe us. But they have been able to see with their own eyes that this is a reality.”

Palacios said she believed that opposition among farmers in parts of Spain would wane and said regional authorities would back conservation projects in the future. 

Felipe García works for regional authorities in Extremadura protecting the lynx but at weekends indulges his hobby of hunting. He shows off his photographs of deer and rabbit hunts.  

“I think that it is good that hunters can now see that the lynx can be good for the countryside and is not a pest. It kills off foxes and other rivals who would prey on rabbits,” he said.   

Once hunted for money, now lynx live in luxury

At the turn of the 20th century, Spanish hunters could earn nearly 4 pesetas (roughly enough to buy 16kg of bread) for every lynx they killed, as the animal was officially regarded as a pest. 

Now the animal lives in some of the most exclusive estates in rural Spain which are run for hunting. The feline is welcomed by their well-off hosts because it kills rival predators like foxes.

An 8,000-hectare estate in Valencia de las Torres, in the south of Extremadura, has about 60 lynx, one of the largest communities in Spain.  

The estate is the property of Sheik Mansour, the owner of Manchester City football club, and it is a paradise for the lynx as it is teeming with rabbits.  

On La Encomienda estate – about an hour’s drive away from Los Mil Quinientos – we waited at the top of a hill looking for lynx. 

Suddenly the rural agent’s radio went Beep!, beep!, beep! A lynx, wearing an electronic collar as many of the animals are tracked, was close. 

Quietar, a three-year-old female, suddenly popped up in front of us, looking almost like a large pet cat, then dashed away.  

What does the future hold for the Iberian lynx?

Steve Cracknell, a rewilding expert and author of The Improbable Rewilding of the Pyrenees, says that despite resistance to bringing back the lynx, the animal will cross regional borders of its own accord. 

“This has been a great success. It was facing extinction and now it has reached a population of 2,000. And it has changed attitudes towards the lynx,” he adds.

Conservationists believe that attitudes not just towards the lynx but also towards domesticated animals have fundamentally changed in Spain in recent decades.

Felix Rodriguez de la Fuente, the late naturalist often referred to as the ‘Spanish David Attenborough’, is credited with beginning this change in mentality in a nation famous – or infamous – for bullfighting.