Otter magic

Albus_Scope

Very much so @michael57 haha. They're very territorial, so if they don't recognise your scent, they'll give you a very stern telling off! It was 3 vs 1, very unfair of them. 😆

Cantilip

That is bad about intensive farming. So the cows inside are unhealthier and get sick more easily? I think a lot must depend on how much space is available. I mean somewhere like Canada the areas are so large on the whole predators with other natural prey might not come near livestock but that's not necessarily so in Europe/UK.

@Albus_Scope I guess you didn't think you needed stout boots to work at an aquarium!

@Strawberry1 I adore otters even if they did nibble Albus' ankles!

I guess the basic options are the lynx would drive out the poor old wildcat, the lynx and the wildcat would have separate territories or of course, now about 'hybridization'.

Albus_Scope

I certainly learned my lesson and wore big stompy boots the following day, they bit right through my high top trainers! 😆

michael57

https://forum.scope.org.uk/discussion/comment/886345#Comment_886345

no i am not saying that the cows housed are less healthy far from it to be honest most tb is spread from cow to cow via laying in cubicles head to head cows do not lay in straight lines in a field facing each other

Cantilip

Who's a happy little lynx, then…

German zoo frees tiny lynx that kept trying to escape

Chapo walked out of his box, had a look round then trotted briskly along the forest path and disappeared into the undergrowth

Tuesday July 23 2024, 8.00pm, The Times

Chapo, who has been free for about a fortnight, was fitted with a GPS collar, although if he’s anything like a domesticated cat it won’t be on for long

A young Carpathian lynx called Chapo, which is Spanish for Shorty, has won his freedom after repeated escape attempts and is now roaming the wilds of Saxony in search of rabbits, foxes and deer.

The one-year-old wildcat, which was born in Nuremberg Zoo, had been intended for a breeding programme for the species which was hunted almost to extinction in Germany by the early 1900s.

However, he had other plans and jumped over the fence of his enclosure shortly after his arrival at a breeding station in the Harz Mountains in early June.

He was quickly caught but his wanderlust was evident. “He kept looking for ways out of the enclosure and found it difficult to settle down,” Saxony’s wildlife authority said in a statement. “This showed that the young lynx was better suited to being released into the wild.”

Before Chapo was released his keepers kept contact with him to a minimum, only fed him game and kept him in a relatively large enclosure

Experts from the Linking Lynx network, which works on the conservation, monitoring and management of the Carpathian lynx, had already classified Chapo as shy and potentially suitable for a reintroduction programme.

His keepers in Nuremberg had been at pains to prepare him for a possible life in the wild. They had kept contact with him to a minimum, only fed him game and kept him in a relatively large enclosure.

The three other lynx released near by have already caught foxes and are now moving on to deer

He was fitted with a GPS collar and brought to a forest in Saxony, the authority said. There, the “powerhouse” predator was released from his box two weeks ago.

“He came out, orientated himself briefly, then trotted briskly along the forest path and finally disappeared into the undergrowth,” the authorities said.

Chapo’s life will now be spent hunting hare, fox and deer in the forests of Saxony

Three other lynxes, called Juno, Alva and Nova, had been released in the same area in the spring and have established hunting grounds there.

They are behaving inconspicuously, are rarely seen and have graduated from catching hares and foxes to deer. So far, they have stayed away from livestock, unlike wolves whose reintroduction has led to tension with farmers who lose thousands of animals a year to wolf attacks. In 2022, more than 4,000 animals, mostly sheep, were killed by wolves, according to the German Federal Documentation and Consultation Centre on Wolves.

While the Eurasian lynx, of which the Carpathian lynx is a subspecies, is not on the global list of endangered species, it is considered extinct in large parts of Europe where it has only been reintroduced locally.

In Germany and Switzerland it is listed as endangered. There are an estimated 190 specimens roaming the wilds of Germany, mainly in the Harz Mountains, Bavaria and Rhineland-Palatinate.

As the largest cat in Europe, the Carpathian lynx is one of the three large land predators of the central European animal kingdom, along with the bear and the wolf.

German zoo frees tiny lynx that kept trying to escape (thetimes.com)