Rejoicing in Macedonia: A few days after the Capture of Balkan lynx “Martin” one more of these shy cats was trapped in the Stogovo Mountains on November, 7th. “Riste” is well known to the lynx experts of the Macedonian Ecological Society (MES).
an old acquaintance: Balkan lynx Riste.
© MES/SCOPES, SNFIn March 2012, also in the Stogovo Mountains, they had already equipped him with a radio collar. The recapture now is a kind of sensation, because Riste’s signal had broken off and the conservationists had lost track of him. Then, recently, they received information that the collar’s battery had to be changed urgently. Just in time they managed to recapture Riste near a killed fox to examine him and service his GPS transmitter. Like Marko and Martin before him, Riste was set free immediately after the examination. The data he transmits give valuable information on the little known ecology of the Balkan lynx, a critically endangered Eurasian lynx subspecies.
In cooperation with its partner organisations KORA (Coordinated research projects for the conservation and management of carnivores in Switzerland), MES and PPNEA (Preservation and Protection of Natural Environment in Albania) EuroNatur started the „Balkan Lynx Recovery Programme“ (BLPR), a Balkan lynx conservation project, in 2006. The field studies on Balkan lynx ecology are partly funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) as part of the SCOPES programme (Scientific co-operation between Eastern Europe and Switzerland).
Read more on EuroNatur’s work to protect the Balkan lynx.