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Iberian cat fight

• Mark Mardell
• 5 Sep 07, 05:16 PM

I have just learned that the European Commission is going to take action aimed at protecting one of the world's rarest big cats, the Iberian lynx, but the move may enrage locals in southern Spain.

The EU already gives a lot of money to protect the animal. This morning, I was looking at lynx cubs who were part of a breeding programme at the . I was watching through a video monitoring system. Outsiders are not allowed into the enclosures because of the risk of disease to the lynx.

There are 20 of them in the breeding programme, on the edge of the park, and only an estimated 150 left in the wild. They are very cute, their faces like an optical illusions that seems to morph between a domestic cat and a tiger.

The cubs are frolicking around and biting each other. But environmentalists say this already rare animal is under threat because of a road built by the .

The Villamanrique road was a simple forest track, but was upgraded to a fast tarmac road. Now the European Commission has decided to take the regional government ot the . The court is almost certain to rule that the road should be torn up. That will delight environmentalists but dismay many who live here.

Read my full report on the efforts to protect the Iberian lynx, and the associated problems created by EU-funded intensive farming, here.

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