The first freedom race of Melisandre

This morning it was released in the municipality of Vilches (Jaén) the fifth and final female lynx within the program of releases planned for this year in the area of reintroduction of Rio Guarrizas (Jaén) under the Life + Iberlince project.

It was about Melissandre the only cub of Fresco and Artemisa, both breeding of the Center for Captive Breeding of the Iberian lynx of Silves (Portugal), where the animal has been trained to subsequently be released into the wild. After a full health review and radiolabeling made by technicians Life + Iberlince Project along with the Ministry of Environment and Land Planning of Andalusia they released the lynx in the municipality of Vilches near the area where Miranda was on last week.

These copies along with Marismillas, Múrtiga and Musaraña are part of the population of Guarrizas (Jaén) which are expected to be established as territorial and reproduce.

As it is shown, the names of these 5 female starts with the letter "M". This is due to the nomenclature system of Iberlince Project and Ex-situ established in 2004 when the animals born in that year began to be named to the "A" as Artemis (the mother of the female released today).

This was done for different purposes: first, not to repeat names among populations and breeding centers in the case of shots biological samples and analytical carried out routine to know the status of the lynx and, secondly, to quickly determine the age of each specimen.

Only one letter of the alphabet does not match this system: the "I", which has been reserved for those animals that appear in the camera traps in the wild population and have not been identified earlier because their origin or age is unknown. Thus we have for example the case of Ibero, adult male founder of Guarrizas (Jaen) or Icarus, adult individual who appeared in this population through immigration from another but of the source is unknown.