The Iberian lynx nearly went extinct because its primary food source, the European rabbit, was decimated by disease, while habitat fragmentation and human development cut off the remaining lynx populations from each other. By 2001, only 62 mature adults survived in two tiny, isolated pockets of southern Spain. The species has since rebounded thanks to intensive conservation, but the same threats that drove it to the brink still shape its survival today.
Rabbit Collapse Starved the Lynx
Rabbits make up roughly 90% of the Iberian lynx’s diet. No other large predator in the world depends so heavily on a single prey species, and that extreme specialization became a fatal vulnerability when rabbit populations crashed across the Iberian Peninsula during the 20th century.
The first blow came in the 1950s, when myxomatosis, a virus deliberately introduced to control rabbits in Europe, reached Spain and Portugal. It killed about 90% of Iberian rabbits. Populations never fully recovered before a second disease hit in the late 1980s: rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus (RHDV), which caused initial mortality rates of 55% to 75% across Iberia. Together, the two diseases reduced the peninsula’s rabbit population by more than 90% over the course of a few decades.
Both diseases eventually became less lethal as surviving rabbits developed partial resistance, but they remain active in wild populations and continue to suppress rabbit numbers well below historical levels. For the lynx, fewer rabbits meant smaller litters, lower cub survival, and entire territories that could no longer support a breeding pair. Areas that once held lynx simply emptied out as the prey base collapsed beneath them.
Habitat Loss and Fragmentation
Even where rabbits persisted, the lynx lost access to much of its former range. The Iberian lynx once lived across the entire Iberian Peninsula. By the early 20th century it was already rare, and by 2002 it existed in just two locations in southwestern Spain: one in the Andújar-Cardeña area of the eastern Sierra Morena, and one in and around the Doñana Protected Area.
Roads, railways, dams, and agricultural expansion carved the lynx’s Mediterranean scrubland habitat into ever-smaller fragments. These barriers didn’t just shrink the total area available. They prevented lynx from moving between populations, which meant young animals looking for new territory couldn’t reach patches of suitable habitat. Spain’s National Hydrological Plan proposed additional dams and water infrastructure that threatened key lynx sites directly. The result was a species boxed into two remnant islands of habitat, each holding fewer than 30 adults.
Genetic Bottleneck and Inbreeding
When a population drops to a few dozen individuals, genetic problems compound fast. The two surviving lynx groups in the early 2000s, estimated at roughly 25 adults in Andújar-Cardeña and 18 in Doñana, were almost completely cut off from each other. Inbreeding became unavoidable, and its consequences showed up in multiple ways.
In the Doñana population, litter sizes declined and disease-related deaths increased as genetic diversity eroded. Researchers found that individual genetic diversity correlated directly with sperm quality in males from both remnant populations: more inbred males had worse sperm. In the captive breeding program, inbreeding was negatively correlated with cub survival in the first months of life. Diseases that are rare in other wild cats, including a type of kidney inflammation called glomerulonephritis and immune system depletion, appeared at unusually high rates in the lynx and were linked to genetic erosion.
The captive population also revealed other inherited problems, including undescended testicles and a form of juvenile epilepsy that affected about 7.4% of cubs born between 2005 and 2012. These conditions, likely carried as recessive traits that become common when the gene pool is tiny, illustrated how precarious the species’ genetic health had become. Researchers later introduced a lynx from outside Doñana that carried immune-related gene variants absent from the local population, a small but meaningful step toward restoring immunological resilience.
Disease From Domestic Cats
The genetic vulnerability made an already dangerous threat worse. During the winter of 2006 and spring of 2007, a feline leukemia virus (FeLV) outbreak swept through the Doñana population and killed roughly two-thirds of the infected lynx. Six males died, including all five males in the most important breeding group. When researchers tested the same viral strain in domestic cats, it did not cause unusually severe disease, suggesting that the lynx’s weakened immune systems, a product of inbreeding, made them far more susceptible than a healthy cat would be.
Domestic and feral cats living near lynx habitat act as a reservoir for diseases like FeLV and feline immunodeficiency virus. For a population numbering in the dozens, losing even a handful of breeding adults to an outbreak can push the entire species closer to collapse. By 2008, scientists described the Doñana population as already caught in an “extinction vortex,” where declining numbers, shrinking genetic diversity, and increasing disease vulnerability feed into each other in a self-reinforcing cycle.
Roads and Direct Human Kills
Vehicle collisions have been a persistent source of mortality, particularly as lynx territories overlap with expanding road networks in southern Spain. During the period studied in Andalusia, an average of about three lynx per year were confirmed killed by vehicles. That number sounds small, but in a population of fewer than 100 animals, every death of a breeding-age adult has an outsized impact on recovery. Illegal trapping, once a major cause of decline, has decreased but not disappeared entirely.
Where the Lynx Stands Now
The Iberian lynx was classified as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List in 2002 and stayed there until 2008. Captive breeding programs, habitat restoration, rabbit population management, and reintroductions across Spain and Portugal have driven a remarkable turnaround. The population grew from 62 mature individuals in 2001 to 648 in 2022. More than 400 lynx have been reintroduced to parts of Portugal and Spain since 2010, with plans to expand into central and northern Spain.
In 2024, the IUCN reclassified the species from Endangered to Vulnerable, two full categories better than its lowest point. The underlying threats, rabbit disease, habitat fragmentation, genetic limitations, and proximity to domestic cats, haven’t vanished. But the trajectory has reversed in a way that few conservationists thought possible two decades ago, making the Iberian lynx one of the most successful large-carnivore recoveries in modern history.