The City Council of Castellar de Santiago (Ciudad Real) with the Iberian Lynx

The Town Council of Castellar de Santiago together with the Popular University of this municipality has been organizing several activities during the last weeks. A good part of them, with the aim of knowing the cultural and natural heritage of this municipality of the south of Ciudad Real.

Among these activities, the presence of the Iberian lynx and the Life+IBERLINCE project has been strongly consolidated. In addition, these activities have served to publicize and promote the "Friends of the Lynx Club" initiative.

The boys and girls of Castellar are great connoisseurs of the Iberian lynx and already consider it as a neighbor more of its region. This perception has been achieved thanks to the numerous awareness initiatives carried out by Iberlince technicians in collaboration with the town hall, the popular university and the public school "San Juan de Ávila".

Among these initiatives, a visit to the "Chico Mendes" Wildlife Refuge was held on Wednesday, 5th of May, where the participants received a talk about the Iberian lynx and its reintroduction in Castilla-La Mancha, under the project Life. Then, a tour of this fauna refuge, guided by the owner of the estate, José María Sierra. In this route the follow up in the field of the released lynx specimens was explained. This is done thanks to the signal emitted by radiofrequency collars carried by the lynxes, which in turn is located by means of directional antennas in the hands of field technicians.

All the participants were very satisfied with the activity and wished that soon a self-sufficient population of lynx would be reached so that the phantom of the extinction, that for so many years has had so close to them.

Iberlince, and in particular the technicians of FomeCam, are grateful for the good disposition, interest and collaboration presented by the City Council of Castellar de Santiago, its Popular University and the Chico Mendes Wildlife Refuge.