I'm very proud to announce my Iberian Lynx project just won the first place in the Conservation Story category at the prestigious Nature's Best Photography photo competition!
Another Alaskan brown bear image of mine was Highly Honored in the Animal Antics category.
I’m very happy to be a part of this year gallery together with other photographers I truly admire (I’m not mentioning any names cause I will surely forget someone), congratulations to all this year winners!
During the spring and summer of 2021 I was observing and photographing the Iberian Lynx in PEÑALAJO, a 2,260-hectare estate located between the municipalities of Santa Cruz de Mudela and Almuradiel in Ciudad Real, very close to the northernmost foothills of Sierra Morena, Spain. The Mediterranean forests that the Iberian lynx calls home are some of the most biodiverse ecosystems in Europe, but the continent’s most endangered cat enjoys one meal above all others - rabbit. A superb, stealthy hunter, the lynx’s specialty is catching rabbits, which account for up to 90% of its diet. At the beginning of the 2000’s only two isolated breeding populations remained in the world, located in southern Spain, and totaling about 100 adult animals, with only 25 breeding females. it was essential to give the lynx more room to breed by creating new populations in other regions. Based on the quantity of rabbits and the quality of the habitat, sites were selected in eastern Sierra Morena, Montes de Toledo, and the Matachel valley in Extremadura as well as the Guadiana valley in Portugal. PEÑALAJO has always considered the conservation of Mediterranean habitats, pasture and arable land was a perfect habitat to take part in the conservation plan of the reintroduction of the Iberian lynx to its historical distribution in Ciudad Real. The local farmers have been working together with the different local and regional administrations and together with WWF, improving the habitat of the Iberian lynx and the local rabbit population. The result, several years later, is that PEÑALAJO has one of the highest Iberian lynx densities in the Iberian Peninsula, with 3 breeding populations, and between 5- 10 new cubs spotted each year.
The high density of rabbits has meant that females successfully breed more than two cubs on average per season and that there is a high number of young specimens in the area. In midday in summer, the mercury climbing above 40° Celsius (104° Fahrenheit), therefor a number of water holes were built to help the wildlife survive the very hot and dry summer.
A small hide was built next to the water hole I have spent many days trying to see and photograph the elusive cats, most days no cats showed up next to the hide but I got lucky few times during three different trips to Spain throughout the spring and summer of 2021 and about 3 weeks in total of sitting in the hide. Every rare encounter with the cats moved me and filled me with joy.
The great news from the field are that due to the conservation efforts the species continue to recover from the brink of extinction and now it's numbers are consistently rising and lately estimated to be over a 1300 cats!
