Floreal

This name "so unmanly" corresponds to one of the male lynx who has worked in recent years to improve the genetics of this species in Doñana.

Floreal was born in the Natural Park of the Sierra de Cardena y Montoro, in the area belonging to the lynx’s core of Yeguas river valley. Son of Candela and Mares, Floreal has born in 2009 in a litter of four cubs. From the outset, this multiple litter was very controlled by the Life team, for fearing that the mother was not able to raise all cubs. However, Candela could bring up any litter based much effort and determination.

At that time they were looking for a male lynx of the population of Sierra Morena to contribute to genetic enhancement of Doñana, and it turned out that our protagonist was the best candidate of the moment. Its future would develop far from its birthplace.

After the excellent experience of the translocation of "Baya" and the intense months of fruitless traveler tracking "Caribú", "Floreal" became the third example of the Iberian lynx translocated to increase the genetic variability in Doñana, whose population was genetically depressed, due, among other factors, to inbreeding.
In January of 2011, dispersive movements started from the farm where it was released in Hinojos (Matasgordas), crossing the marshes of Rocio south. In March of the same year, it traveled back and forth length of 65 km to the west. On this tour it discovered the crops under plastic in Moguer and Palos de la Frontera and returns to the National Park. In May started another journey north, recrossing the marsh and reaching the A-49 in Bollullos del Condado. Throughout the summer it continued to move without ever crossing the highway to the north, however if the borders eastward, reaching the river Guadiamar Benacazón.

From September 2011 Floreal is definitely settled, and since then runs a farm in territory straddling Batteries Hinojos (Huelva-Sevilla). There it became an adult and also has a relatioship with a mixed female (Doñana-Sierra Morena) called "Fenda" descendant of "Baya". And thus were born the first cubs in the Doñana population with 75% of Sierra Morena genetics.
Floreal took its male territorial status for 4 years. In this period, as a good adult male, it only left its territory on different times of the heat during the winter, in order to perform short trips, visiting the territories of neighboring females.

On the last November 20, an individual who was walking along a track between Villamanrique de la Condesa and Hinojos warned the discovery of the body of a lynx. He quickly launched the operation that the Life+Iberlince Project provided in these cases. The death has occurred recently enough that the mortality sensor carried in the animal's collar had not been activated yet.

After a quick and effective removal by an agent of Environment that was in the area, Floreal's body moved to the Center for Analysis and Diagnosis of CMAyOT in Malaga where it underwent to the necropsy. The results of analysis are still pending, the final cause of death of this valuable specimen is still unknown; although the suspicion points that it has been produced by natural causes, and that the body showed no evidence of any trauma.

During these years of intensive monitoring of the Doñana lynx population in general, and genetic enhancement in particular, to Floreal they have known its ten descendants. In addition to its2015 cubs, three grown children a year and they are alive today. One of them, the female "Jumilla" first issue of thin speck in Doñana for decades, it has been established as a territorial adult and promises to continue with this genetic line.

Floreal widely fulfilled the purpose for which it was decided to undertake its management, and the Doñana lynx population is now less "poor" because of it.

Thank you Floreal!

Video of the dispersive movements between March and June of 2011: here.