The most endangered cat species in the world, the Iberian Lynx, is slowly clawing its way back from the brink of extinction. One hundred years ago, there were about 100,000 of these cats in the wilds of Spain and Portugal. By 2002, the population had dropped to barely 150. If it were to become extinct, it would be the first feline species since the sabre-tooth tiger to do so.

The Iberian Lynx is a striking cat, with distinctive leopard-like spots. They can grow to about three feet long and 33 pounds. The lynx has four sets of whiskers: two groups on the ears and two on the chin that it uses to sense its prey.

Its decline has been attributed to habitat destruction, hunting, and a precipitous decline in the population of wild rabbits, the Lynx’s primary source of food. A male requires one rabbit per day; nursing females need three.

The recent success in building its numbers is due to efforts at a captive breeding program in Doñana National Park in southern Spain.

Dr Astrid Vargas has been running the program since December 2003. She started with four females and one male. There are now 77 of the lynxes in captivity.

Dr Vargas is no stranger to saving endangered species. She has worked on programs to save the black-footed ferret and the Mexican wolf in the United States and the Siberian tiger in Russia. She says that her work is “satisfying and very terribly tiring”.

“When you are responsible for a lot of live animals that are critically endangered you never disconnect. It’s day and night.”

Earlier this summer, a record 17 surviving cubs were born in captivity in Doñana and in another breeding center in La Olivilla.

Captive breeding presents unique challenges with this species. Siblings become violent toward one another between 30 and 60 days of age, with the peak at about 45 days. Cubs frequently kill their littermates, though no one knows exactly why. One of Dr Vargas’ first surviving sets of cubs was killed in such a fight in 2005.

Vargas says that she has now reached her goal of the 30 adult males and 30 adult females necessary to begin reintroducing the species to the wild.

“We are now two years ahead of schedule of the growth projections for the captive breeding progam. The next big challenge is to prepare the captive-born animals for their survival in the wild,” she said. There are plans to add two more breeding centers to accommodate their growing numbers.

Introduction of the captive-bred cats into the wild will begin next year.

You can see Iberian Lynxes up close and purrsonal on their webcams. Click here to view.

[LINK: Physorg.com]

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And I saved the best for last:

Don’t forget! You can leave a comment on this post for an entry in The Cat’s Meow’s giveaway of a custom oil painting of your cat by Linden Alley.

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The Scottish Wildcat (an endangered wild cat the size of a large domestic cat) is not the only big cat roaming the Scottish countryside. This week, a big black cat — possibly a panther — was spotted near the Faslane Naval Base on Gare Loch, 25 miles east of Glasgow.

This sighting was unusual in that it was videotaped, enabling experts to review the footage and concur that the animal was neither a dog nor a domestic cat.

Chris Swallow took the photos and video from his mobile phone. At first, he thought it was a Labrador Retriever, crossing railroad tracks next to the Churchill Estate in Helensburgh. But animal’s movements were much more fluid than a dog’s, so he investigated further, only to be stunned by what he saw.

“The animal wasn’t moving the way I expected a dog to. It was then I realized that what I was seeing was a big cat,” said Swallow, who happens to be a trained dog handler.

“I ran to my car to grab my mobile phone for a picture. I stood on the nearby rail bridge in Winston Road and got a still photo and a couple of minutes of footage of the animal moving up the railway line.

“It was remarkable. I’ve heard stories about creatures like this moving about the countryside but never really believed them before. Looking back at the video I don’t think there’s any doubt that it’s a big cat.”

In recent years, reports of mysterious big cats have been more numerous than sightings of Nessie in Loch Ness. In fact, there have been so many big cat sightings, the group “Big Cats in Britain” was formed to investigate each claim. The group examined Swallow’s photos and video, and concluded that the animal was “certainly not a domestic cat.”

Shaun Stevens, a researcher for the group, said: “I have a working theory that some of these cats may be a hybrid species or possibly a new species of cat.

“Knowing that the width of the rail tracks in Chris’s video is four feet, eight-and-a-half inches, the animal photographed by him is clearly in excess of four feet.

“Initial first impressions are very exciting, as I think this could be one of the best pieces of footage of a big cat in the UK.”

According to Stevens, the area is a favorite big cat haunt, with an average of 30 sightings reported each year.

Some of the sightings might be attributable to too many single malts, but authorities believe that when the Dangerous Wild Animals Act was passed in the UK in the 1970s, making it illegal to keep big cats, many were released to the wild.

Biologists in Colorado have been encouraged by the increase in the lynx population this year, after finding the first newborns documented since 2006:

DENVER (AP) — The discovery of 10 lynx kittens in Colorado this spring after finding none the last two years and the location of some of the newborns outside what’s considered the cats’ core area have raised the hopes of biologists overseeing restoration of the long-haired mountain feline to the Centennial State.

The seven male and three female lynx kittens found in five separate dens are the first newborns documented since 2006.

“This was very, very good news,” said Tanya Shenk, the lead researcher for the Colorado Division of Wildlife’s lynx restoration program.

A total of 126 kittens are known to have been born in the state since biologists began releasing lynx trapped in Canada and Alaska in southwest Colorado. The tuft-eared cats with big, padded feet, good for maneuvering on snow, were native to Colorado but were wiped out by the early 1970s by logging, trapping, poisoning and development.

Biologists think a drop in the number of snowshoe hares, the main food source for lynx, might have contributed to a decline in kittens the past two years. Shenk said a study of snowshoe hares showed high densities in 2006-2007 and low densities in 2007-2008.

A milestone for the restoration program occurred in 2006 when Colorado-born females started reproducing. This is the first year that biologists found kittens whose parents were both born in Colorado. Biologists made the determination using data from the adults’ radio collars.

“It’s certainly another one of those positive signs,” Shenk said of Colorado-born cats mating.

Another encouraging sign is that two of the five dens with kittens were north of what’s considered the core lynx area, southwest Colorado. Lynx released in the state’s rugged San Juan Mountains have roamed into neighboring states. Shenk said finding kittens in other areas shows that they are comfortable enough to reproduce outside the core habitat.

Division of Wildlife lead biologist Rick Kahn said the agency is close to achieving all its goals for lynx restoration.

” We are very encouraged by the results this year and are hopeful that these animals will contribute toward a sustaining population for Colorado,” Kahn said.

The Denver-based conservation group Center for Native Ecosystems said the existence of dens farther north shows the prevalence of suitable habitat and prey in the state.The group is one of four suing to force the federal government to designate more land in the region as critical habitat for lynx, listed as threatened on the endangered species list.

Federal officials said they didn’t set aside any habitat in Colorado because the state’s lynx program had not produced a self-sustaining population. The designation can trigger additional protections for a species.

A total of 218 lynx from Alaska and Canada have been released in Colorado since 1999. No transplanted cats have been released in the state for the past couple years.

Biologists don’t know how many lynx are in the state. They’re currently monitoring 49 lynx with working radio collars, but many of the original collars have stopped working. Most of the kittens born in Colorado haven’t been fitted with transmitters.

Because Colorado was at the southernmost tip of the cat’s historic range, critics questioned the wisdom of trying to restore lynx to the state. The criticism grew louder when four of the first five lynx released starved to death, prompting immediate changes in the procedures.

Instead of releasing the lynx immediately, biologists kept them caged for about three weeks to fatten them up and freed them later in the winter when prey is more available.

In 2000, just one of 55 lynx died of starvation. That strengthened biologists’ belief that southwest Colorado mountains are good lynx habitat.

[LINK: LA Times; PHOTO: Colorado Division of Wildlife]

Jane Chanteau, a 73-year-old grandmother, found a wild thing in her bedroom the other night, and it wasn’t her husband:

It was near midnight Tuesday when the woman was shocked awake in bed by the howling scream of her pet cat from under the bed.

Through glazed, half-open eyes, Jane Chanteau, a 73-year-old grandmother, saw a giant animal next to her bed.

“I was half asleep and first I though it was a big dog, trying to get under the bed, and I whacked him on the rear end, like, ‘You’re not getting my baby,’ ” Chanteau said.

The animal leaped onto a box in the corner of the room. Chanteau realized she’d just swatted a 4-foot mountain lion that was in her bedroom.

“He sat there on the box, looking at me, like he was stunned, asking, ‘Who are you? How’d I get in here? How do I get out?’ ”

Now fully awake, Chanteau screamed to her husband, “It’s a mountain lion!”

The Chanteaus live near Big Sur in Northern California, in a home on the edge of a redwood canyon, near last summer’s brutal fire zone. Her theory is that her 11-year-old Cat, Bearli (Swiss for “Little Bear” which he resembles) walked past a glass door in the lighted hallway of their home. Outside on the porch, the hungry mountain lion rammed through the glass door and took chase after the housecat. Bearli sought refuge under the bed, the cougar in hot pursuit. Bearli screamed and woke up Chanteau.

Chanteau quickly escaped the bedroom and took refuge in the hallway. She and her husband observed that the mountain lion appeared calm and unconcerned.

“The mountain lion went from window to window like he was looking for a way out,” Chanteau said. “At one point, he knocked a curtain rod down. Then he jumped on the bed and knocked a mirror over. He left a paw print in the middle of a photo that had been knocked on the floor.

“It was incredible for me. I don’t know anything about mountain lions. I had never seen one. I lived here 24 years. And here one was in my bedroom.”

Chanteau then headed to the front door. It was closed, but then, when a breeze swept through, she saw the hole in the door and the pile of glass on the floor. She then grabbed a broom, and handed it to her husband.

Punchera then talked to the mountain lion as if it could understand him. “You come out this way,” he said to it, the couple recalled. Punchera said, “We’ve got to get out of his view, so he can find his way out.”

So they both retreated. Just as Punchera figured, the mountain lion then exited the bedroom, but it walked right into a front room.

“I was standing there and the mountain lion walked right by me, 2 feet away from me,” Chanteau said. “He kept going. My husband was following him with the broom, and the mountain lion went right out the front door.”

After a pause, she added, “I was supposed to be afraid, but I was calm.”

Once outside, the lion appeared to get his bearings, and suddenly, sprinted into the adjacent woods and disappeared.

Bearli the cat suffered some swelling from a slight puncture wound but was otherwise unharmed. Unashamed of being a scaredy-cat, he spent the next two days under the bed.

• Read the story on SFGate.com.

Beverly Hood, the homeowner, called for help when she saw the cougar snoozing on her porch. Like a game of “Telephone,” something got lost in translation, and the control center dispatcher told Officer Ableman that a housecat was bothering the woman. Imagine his surprise when he climbed onto the porch and found the napping cougar.

An officer from the Wyoming Fish and Game Department was summoned to tranquilize the cat and relocate it.

• Read the article