Sad news

In June we were tracking big carnivores in our forests. I already wrote about 2 year old lynx Maja and her three cubs.

Sadly on 10th July she passed away (and with her her three cubs died too). The offical cause of her death is still unknown. Hopefully after necropsy we'll be able to know more. Currently it is thought she died of natural causes (even though she was still young) or problems caused by inbreeding (heart faiure, skeletal deformation and often increased chances for leuchemy).

Currently there are about 20 lynxes on our territory. After being extinct for almost 100 years, six subjects were brought in 1973 from neighbour country (3 males and 3 females, two of them mother and son). At first (after couple of decades) it seemed the population was thriving, but in late 90s scientists noticed something was happening with lynx population. It started to drop. With help of genetics conclusion was made that because of low genetic pool of starter six animal population couldn't avoid inbreeding. But when the inbreeding factor was calculated the number was much lower than expected. With additional researches more possible reasons for their numbers have been found: illegal kills, low numbers of their prey and land fragmentation.

The number of illegal kills is still unknown, which with their already low numbers could drastically influence the gene pool. Because of that some suggestions have been made to add some fresh blood again, but the country from which the last lynxes were brought is struggling with the same problem herself.
The best (but probably impossible) solution would be to make corridors through which contact with lynxes from other populations could be established. This way with migrations new genes could be added.

Loss of Maja and her cubs is sad, but I hope things will finally start to change.