Yesterday, Life Iberlince project specialists, along with members of the Rural Agents corps, the Wildlife Service, and the Santa Coloma de Cervelló City Council, captured the animal, who had been spotted on May 29th, in an orchard within the municipality.

'Litio', the Iberian lynx spotted last May 29th in an orchard in Santa Coloma de Cervelló, in Baix Llobregat, was relocated yesterday in order to guarantee its safety. The animal had been moving around urban centres and various infrastructures - unsuitable places for its optimal development.

Once notified by the owner of the orchard in Santa Coloma de Cervelló, the Rural Agents Corps (CAR) detected, identified and tracked the lynx until it was captured. Then, an operation was put into action to locate the animal and verify that it was, in fact, an Iberian lynx. Once identified, a tracking operation was carried out in collaboration with the Santa Coloma de Cervelló City Council, awaiting the arrival of the capture team from Andalusia.

The capture operation was put together by a team of a dozen people, consisting of European Life Iberlince project specialists, rural agents, members of the Government’s Wildlife Service, and the Santa Coloma de Cervelló City Council. The animal entered one of the three traps set for this purpose.

He was immediately transferred to the Wildlife Centre of Torreferrussa, where a veterinary team inspected him and took samples to assess his health. They also removed the GPS collar he was wearing in order to download all the tracking data he accumulated during this time, and learn more about his journey from Portugal (where he was released in 2015 within the scope of the European project) to the vicinity of Barcelona.

Once it was confirmed that he was indeed in good health, the Iberlince team relocated the animal to Andalusia, where a new tracking collar will be placed and he will, again, be released in a more suitable location.

'Litio', an unconventional lynx

His identification was made possible by the collar that the animal was wearing, as well as the collaboration of the species’ reintroduction experts in the Iberian Peninsula, and Life Iberlince project specialists. 'Litio' is a male born in 2014 at the El Acebuche Captive Breeding Center, in Huelva, released in 2015 in Portugal, and captured again on May 5th, 2016 at the Gibraleon estate (Huelva), after a deficient adaptation to the environment was detected. He returned to wild in Portugal, in the Guadiana Valley, and a few days later his collar’s GPS signal was lost.

This is the first time that the presence of an Iberian lynx was detected in Catalonia since the beginning of the 20th century. The Life Iberlince project, which involves Portugal and Spain (Extremadura, Castilla-La Mancha, Murcia and Andalusia), aims to recover the species’ historical distribution through reintroduction. The conservation works carried out have made it possible to grow the population from 94 specimens in 2002 to 589 in the latest 2017 census.