The decline of the European rabbit as the main threat to the Iberian lynx

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As we already saw, the recovery program for the Iberian lynx (Lynx pardinus) was completely successful, and its populations experienced a growing trend, leading the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to lower its threat category in 2015. of the lynx to “endangered”, experiencing an annual growth of more than 20% in the last 3 years. Many carnivores depend on the European rabbit to survive. A study has shown that the collapse that this species already experienced in the 80s mainly affected the lynx, which was unable to change the habit of its prey.

Currently, European lagomorphs ( Oryctolagus cuniculus ) or European Oman Email List rabbits have been seeing their population decline alarmingly for several decades and, unlike the lynx, they are not recovering. Illustration 1. European rabbit (oryctolagus cuniculus). Pixabay Diseases have been the main cause of the decrease in their population, and as a consequence, the displacement of vital food for some carnivores. The myxomatosis virus has been attacking this population since the 1950s, producing cases of local extinctions. Already in the 1980s, and after a slight recovery, Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease (RHD), highly contagious and with fatal results, once again attacked the species.



The last disease arrived in the last decade and reached Doñana in 2013. At that time, the presence of the European rabbit decreased by 80% in just five years. Since then, their populations have not recovered and this has a direct effect on species that have not been able to be self-sufficient and that continue to depend on them for survival, such as the Iberian lynx. In that same year, the Iberlince program designed a recovery plan in which more than 42,000 were released in areas of Doñana with an emblematic presence of the species, however, populations have continued to decline. Among the group of non-arthropod invertebrates, there is the well-known zebra mussel.