Endangered European Lynx Getting Final Chance for Survival in France Experiment

In the spectacularly beautiful Vosges Mountains of eastern France, half a dozen Czech lynxes roaming the forest are the seed of a new population struggling for survival against nature and man.

For most of the people in this region of low mountains west of the Rhine River, reintroduction of the European lynx into an area from which it disappeared in the 19th Century is a wonderful thing.

“But you only need two or three (people) against it, if those two or three have rifles,” said Patrick Barbier, secretary general of the Regional Assn. for the Protection of Nature.

Perhaps only 3,000 to 3,500 European lynxes are left on the Continent, and nearly all of them are in Eastern Europe, says Veronique Herrenschmidt, head of France’s lynx reintroduction program.

Of the 12 lynxes released in the Vosges in the last five years, only six are alive, and perhaps not that many. It’s difficult to know now because their transmitter collars have ceased to function. Some lynxes have been shot, either for sport or out of anger. One was a female whose two young then died; others have just disappeared.

Final Dice Roll

Early next year, one last effort will be made. It’s the final roll of the dice for Herrenschmidt, the French Ministry of Environment, the National Office for Hunting and Wild Fauna and the World Wide Fund for Nature, all participating in the program.

Six more lynxes have been reserved in Czechoslovakia and are being held there until the end of the French hunting season in January. They then will be brought here, acclimated and freed.

“We haven’t won yet,” said Barbier. “This is double or nothing. We are going to put six more in, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll have to rethink the whole program.”

Success, according to Herrenschmidt, a 32-year-old agricultural engineer with a doctorate in ecology, “will be when there is reproduction in the Vosges and those lynxes themselves become adult. Maybe in two or three years.”

Opposition comes essentially from some hunters and farmers. Hunters claim lynxes reduce the game population, particularly the beautiful and tasty Vosges roe deer, and farmers worry about their sheep.

Forest, Vineyards

This region is mostly mountainous forest or vineyards, with few sheep, so farmers are less of a problem. Even so, the World Wide Fund for Nature reimburses farmers for the loss of domestic animals proven to have been killed by lynxes, a protected species. Usually, there is no mystery. A lynx’s kill is a signature.

“It’s always the same,” said Herrenschmidt. “He kills by strangling, biting his prey in the throat.”

In France, where virtually every square foot of huntable land is parceled out and leased, often at incredibly high prices, hunters have a very proprietary view of wild game. Any reduction of roe deer, for example, means fewer for the hunters to shoot.

Nonetheless, the majority of hunters support the program.

“We accepted the reintroduction of the lynx on condition that if it becomes prolific it will be opened for hunting,” said Gilbert de Turckheim, president of the Hunting Federation of the Lower Rhine.

‘Right to Question’

“Here the price of hunting leases is very expensive,” he said. “Hunters have the right to question anything that affects the level of game population.”

Ecologists like Herrenschmidt would argue that the lynxes provide a service by culling out the weak, unfit animals, which in the long run leads to better, healthier deer.

Like their predecessors, the new lynxes will be taken to a site high in the Vosges, kept in large cages in the forest and fed wild rabbits. After a month or two, the cages will be opened.

The scientific aspect of the lynx program is to study the role of “superpredators” in the ecosystem of the area.