Peñalajo Manor, located near the Sierra Morena and located between Santa Cruz de Mudela and Almuradiel in Ciudad Real, is a place of pilgrimage for wildlife lovers. The farm has been cooperating with the World Wildlife Fund for many years as part of the Iberian lynx breeding program. Part of its premises is abandoned, and the barn has become a natural refuge for lynxes.

Six births of lynxes have already taken place in this barn on the farm, helped by the absence of people. But WWF’s camera traps have just recorded the exceptional fact of registering the simultaneous birth of six lynx cubs not from one mother, but from two different females. It so happens that both females were born in this haystack, so they feel so comfortable that they are mother and daughter.

“These are wild lynxes, the farm is not a lynx breeding center. It’s a cheese factory and they have sheep, it just so happened that this farm had an abandoned barn and it turned out to be very attractive to the lynxes,” he explains. Ramon Perez de Ayala, WWF Species Program Officer. “It has happened more times, lynxes use abandoned buildings because it protects them from heat and cold,” he adds.

Those in charge of the NGO thought it was a female, but they were surprised to find that it was two females raising puppies together, three each.

In 2022, 1,400 Iberian lynxes have been registered on the peninsula. In 2002, there were 100. “This is a very promising figure, but the work has not yet been done. We must continue to work until we triple the population, while we manage to reduce their threats, abuses and poaching to a minimum, ”he says. Anton Alvarez of WWF.

According to the calculations of the conservation organization, 750 reproductive females are needed in the population to bring the species out of its extinction zone. According to a recent WWF study, this will happen in 2040.