Project Update

Press release from the State Office for Environment, Agriculture and Geology, Saxony, Germany, 28 October 2025:

The RELynx Saxony project team could hardly believe their eyes when they saw the camera trap images: Alva, a lynx released into the wild in the Eibenstock Forest in March 2024, is roaming the forests of the Western Ore Mountains with two cubs. This confirms that lynx are breeding in Saxony again for the first time in almost 300 years, as announced today in Dresden by the Saxon State Office for Environment, Agriculture and Geology.

This joyful event, one year after the successful establishment of the first reintroduced lynxes, is a clear sign that the animals feel at home in the Westerzgebirge mountains and that the Ore Mountains are a suitable habitat for this strictly protected species.

From the outset, Chapo, a male lynx from Nuremberg Zoo who was also released into the wild in 2024, was considered a possible father. At the end of the mating season, in early April 2025, so-called point locations transmitted by GPS collar transmitters revealed that both lynxes had spent three days together in Alva's territory. This was a very late date for a meeting, as the mating season for lynxes only lasts until April. Due to the young age of the male lynx, which was only two years old at the time of mating, it was not initially possible to assume with certainty that reproduction had been successful. Male lynxes usually reach sexual maturity at the age of three, while female lynxes reach it at the age of two.

Alva is a wildcat from the Swiss Jura. She has already raised young there. This experience will benefit the Saxon lynx offspring. This is because everything the young lynxes need to know by the age of about ten months, they learn from their mother. Male lynxes do not participate in raising the young. After just a few months, the young lynxes follow their mother to her prey and make their first attempts at hunting themselves. The offspring then leave their mother and seek their own territory. This is a challenging and dangerous time for the still inexperienced young lynxes. Only about half of the young lynxes reach their second year of life.

The RELynx Saxony project team will use wildlife cameras to monitor how the young animals develop. This requires a great deal of experience and patience. Lynxes have territories covering over a hundred square kilometres, so it can take weeks before they fall into a ‘photo trap’ again.

Background to the project:

The aim of the RELynx Saxony project is to establish a lynx population in the Ore Mountains and, as a stepping stone, to connect the existing populations in the Bavarian Forest and the Harz Mountains with the original populations in the Carpathians. This will only succeed if the reintroduced lynxes produce offspring. In this way, the population can grow and sustain itself in the long term. In addition, offspring contribute to genetic diversity – an important factor given the small number of lynxes in Germany.

On the extermination of lynxes around 300 years ago: A lynx stone in Saxon Switzerland commemorates the last documented lynx killed in Saxony. It is dated 3 April 1743.