We began with the fourth season of systematic camera trapping in Slovenia. 51 hunting clubs and 6 state-owned hunting grounds collaborate in this year’s effort for lynx population survey and together with local hunters, we equipped 150 locations with camera traps. Each season represents a new challenge; even though we identified quite some locations where lynx is recorded each season, we still select many new locations for camera trapping each season. We are therefore looking forwards to the first batch of camera trap records each year to see where lynx would surprise us this time.
While camera trapping in the Dinaric area was last significantly upgraded in 2019-2020 when we expanded the network of camera traps to the pre-Alpine area, we will deploy camera traps for the first time this season in Gorenjska region where all five recently translocated lynx reside. We are specifically interested in how many females with kittens will get recorded in the study area as we received quite some information about observations of lynx kittens from local hunters and other people.
Setting up a camera trap. Photo: Urša Fležar, LIFE Lynx
Checking if the camera is recording from the right angle. Photo: Urša Fležar, LIFE Lynx
On the way to the camera trapping site. Photo: Urša Fležar, LIFE Lynx
One of the first lynx photos from the 2021/2022 lynx monitoring season was a lynx male from Kočevska Reka. Photo: LIFE Lynx