Spotted cat back in the wild

17 November 2013

I HAD escaped mosquitoes up to this. With temperatures in the mid-twenties, hint of a breeze and human social courtesy near a hotel pool I had pushed my luck. I blame the pool.

The heat and still water as darkness fell was a happy hunting ground for the silent blood-suckers. I vaguely hoped cliff martins would gulp them as they hunted through the high-rise canyons but it was wrong place, wrong time of day.

Dozens of tree sparrows now chattered contentedly as they assembled in their night roosts. They had returned en masse after a couple of nights of heavy rain gave a lift to the parched earth and a great hatching of insects provided food. Now it was all changed again with blistering sun.

Red admiral butterflies spread wings to rest, a lone orange-tip fluttered conspicuously in brassica-white territory and five or six semi-feral cats were stretched where a donor of food passed daily.

People feed stray cats. People feed birds. Those with garden bird tables hate cats because they stalk and kill more songbirds than equally unloved magpies. Some people apply anti-cat programmes which includes stone-throwing. Sometimes the animals respond by defecating in unexpected garden places! What a life! Striking a balance is the big task.

Last week's tale of the Madrid cat café brought an unexpected response from readers who succeeded in tracking me down (not easy!). This indicated much cat solidarity out there!

But the really Big Cat of Spain and Portugal is the Iberian lynx (lynx pardina), hunted almost to extinction in the wild. But with captured breeding pairs nurtured in zoo-centres in Andalusia (Spain) and the Algarve (Portugal) it is in amazing recovery mode.

These animals, leopard-spotted and with long pointed ears, are not unlike the wildcats of the Scottish Highlands, rare now by all accounts and dissipated by inbreeding with feral cats.

Early next year, the first lynx born in captivity in an animal centre in the old Moorish capital of Silves in Portugal will be released into the wild in Alentejo, a vast, sparsely populated province, mainly agricultural with widespread cork oak and olive plantations.

The region covers about one-third of the whole country, stretching southwards from the Rio Tejo to the Algarve and home to hundreds of species of birds.

There is also a healthy rabbit population. This is vital for the lynx as rabbit is its principal food.

A large swath of countryside near the border of Extremadura has been chosen as the release site. It is a place of wildlife special protection to Barrancos right on the international line and overlapping into the natural park of Sierra de Arcena on the Spanish side, historic home of the lynx.

There is considerable Iberian cooperation. Down south in Andalusia, the Spanish have already released 19 animals, all born in captivity in both Spain and Portugal and trained in hunting and survival skills.

So far, the Portuguese have not said how many animals will run loose in the wild countryside of oak and scrub but it will almost certainly be more than one cat returning to its ancestral homeland to cull the rabbit population and begin new families that once again will be born free.

Sunday Independent
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