The LIFE Lynx project team met on the Lynx Educational Trail in Kočevje and together with supporters celebrated receiving two LIFE awards and the naming of Rok Černet as the person of the week on Slovenian radio Val 202. During the walk, team members recalled various events from the project and new insights gained. An interesting thought was also shared by a forester Katja Konečnik, who spoke about how differently people and animals perceive things; national borders, which somehow divide us humans, usually do not pose any obstacle for animals. On the other hand, things that connect people, such as roads, railways, etc., often represent an big barrier for animals. Especially for lynxes, the Ljubljana-Koper highway has proven to be an important obstacle that makes it difficult for them to spread from the Dinaric region towards the Southeastern Alps. For the long-term preservation of lynxes in our country, we will also have to tackle this challenge.
International Lynx Day has been celebrated since 2018, at the initiative of the Interreg CE 3Lynx project. Lynx in Europe are endangered and would struggle to survive without human help. To save the lynx in Dinaric Mountains and SE Alps we have brought 18 lynxes from the Carpathian Mountains to save the population from extinction and 14 of them successfully included into the population.
LIFE LYNX’ GREATEST ACHIEVEMENTS:
◉ The number of the translocated lynx – 18 animals
◉ Increasing the Dinaric-SE Alpine lynx population’s size and distribution
◉ Creating the stepping stone in the Slovenian Alps
◉ Raising awareness on lynx conservation by involving 1300+ locals and schoolchildren, producing 120 articles, and being mentioned by the media in more than 1600 news reports
◉ Communal efforts of various institutions (hunters, foresters, biologists and other experts)
◉ Police & hunters working together against poaching
◉ Consideration of large carnivore’s occurrence in wild ungulate hunting management plans
◉ Protection of connectivity corridors through national forest and hunting management plans in Slovenia
◉ Inspiring other projects for lynx translocations, like ULyCA2
◉ Guidelines for the conservation of lynx population at the international level.
