Spain installs traffic light system to help rare Iberian lynx cross the road
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Loading... - Brenda Butler
- 25 Apr 2022
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A hi-tech system is to be used in Spain to prevent the endangered Iberian lynx from one of its biggest threats – getting run over by cars.
Infrared sensors and a thermic camera register the presence of one of the world’s most threatened cats as they approach roads and send a warning to a control unit.
This unit triggers an alert signal for drivers and warns them through signs to slow down to the speed limit.
The radar sensor measures if the car has actually slowed down. If it does, the system stops to act.
The programme also includes signs asking motorists to slow down in areas where the lynx is known to live.
Veterinarians, who have been behind a 20-year programme called Life LynxConnect to save the feline from extinction, know where the lynx is living as they are tracked by GPS collars after being released into the wild from captivity.
Road deaths and furtive hunting by man are two of the biggest threats to an animal which is classed as “endangered” by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
Twenty years ago, the lynx was classed as “critically endangered” after decades of being hunted by man, the dramatic loss of its own habitat and a succession of diseases which decimated the population of its staple food – the rabbit.
Researchers estimated that there were only 94 lynx alive in 2002.
Now there are an estimated 1,100 of these felines in Spain and Portugal, according to a 2020 census.
“Today the greatest threats to the lynx are getting run over and also because of persecution by hunters. It is, of course, difficult to stop these animals from getting knocked down,” Guillermo López, a veterinarian who has works on a lynx preservation scheme, told i. Read More…
