Doubts over Returning Lynx to Central Italy

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Doubts over Returning Lynx to Central Italy

CAT NEWS
Issue 16, Spring 1992

Caution is necessary in considering reintroduction of lynx Lynx lynx to the area of the Abruzzo National Park in the Central Appenine mountains of Italy, recommends Dr Bernadino Ragni of the Institute of Zoology at Perugia University.

He was responding to an article in CAT NEWS 15 by Professor Franco Tassi, Director of the park.

Dr Ragni expresses particular concern about possible damage to the only remaining population of the Abruzzo chamois Rupicapra pyrenaica ornata, which is already subject to predation by wolves, brown bears, feral dogs, golden eagles and poachers.

"Furthermore, the spatial organization and habitat use of the chamois show that it has not colonized the whole environment available in the Abruzzo National Park. The lynx is an eclectic predator, capable of specializing temporarily or permanently on chamois. And the Abruzzo chamois has lost specific anti-lynx predation behaviour through hundreds, perhaps thousands of generations.

"I believe that it is necessary for us to ask whether it is necessary, right, ethical and civic to take the risk of reintroducing the lynx."

Ragni declares that there might be reason to feel reassured by the fact that proponents of lynx reintroduction were convinced of the necessity of creating at least two other viable populations of Abruzzo chamois in different areas. The operation would take at least five to 10 years, he says.

Other factors that need to be taken into consideration, Ragni says, are the lack of a system of protected areas linked to the Abruzzo National Park and the hostile attitude of local people to large carnivores and to the establishment of more parks and reserves.

Drawing attention to the heavy hunting pressure throughout the Italian peninsula, which had created a "faunal desert", particularly for hares, game birds and deer, the preferred prey of lynx, he says that the Abruzzo National Park is exceptional and could be considered a "happy island". Both from a faunal and socio-political point of view it was in extreme contrast to the rest of the peninsula.

"It would be a strategic and fatal mistake to assume that it can be a model for regions outside its borders," he adds.

Ragni quotes studies by the Gruppo Lupo Italia and Centro di Studi Ecologica Appenninici concerning the death by poison, trapping and shooting of at least 30 wolves in the past 15 years -- "150% of the 1990 population" -- adding, "This does not generate any great hope for hospitality for a new large carnivore".

He says that, in the Lagorai mountains and the eastern Alps, four of an estimated 10 adult lynx had been killed, and similar happenings occurred in other countries where the lynx had returned -- Austria, Bavaria, France, Slovenia and Switzerland.

In comments on the systematic position of the lynx in Italy, Ragni says that there were no concrete proofs of the existence of an Appenine lynx, although large and small lynx were present in the peninsula, as in all of south-western Europe, before the Pleistocene glaciations.

He suggests that evidence of the Appenine lynx's existence could be explained by the widespread custom in Italy, since the Middle Ages, of keeping exotic animals in captivity.

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