Translocation Update

Press release, Landesamt für Umwelt, Landwirtschaft und Geologie, Saxony, 22.01.2025:

The lynx's movements can be tracked quite well using the data from her transmitter collar. According to this, she began her migration on 27 December 2024 and has since covered almost 150 kilometres. This long migration so shortly before the beginning of the lynx mating season has surprised the experts of the Saxon reintroduction project «RELynx Saxony». Females are usually more territorial than their male counterparts. Nova is proving that female lynx can also embark on long migrations and that this may be a way to connect the stepping stone populations in Saxony, Thuringia and the Bavarian Fichtelgebirge. This is to prevent genetic impoverishment. In addition, Nova had managed to cross a fairly dense transport network without coming to any harm. Among other things, she crossed the A72, A9 and A4 motorways northwards towards Jena.
Nova, a female lynx from the Swiss Jura Mountains, had quickly found a new home in the Westerzgebirge region after being released into the wild and established her territory between Eibenstock, Schneeberg and Bockau. The Saxon reintroduction project regrets that she has left. Now the hope remains that she will meet a sexually mature male lynx in Thuringia and give birth in spring. This would be a gain for the lynx population in Central Germany, according to the project team.
After the death of lynx Anton, who was killed in a traffic accident, and the migration of Nova, only three of the five released lynx are now roaming the Westerzgebirge on silent paws. According to the tracking data, the female lynx Alva, also a wild catch from the Swiss Jura mountains, stayed in the area around Eibenstock and in the neighbourhood of Nova throughout December. During this period, Nova shifted her main area of activity from the Eibenstock region about ten kilometres eastwards to the vicinity of Breitenbrunn. The male lynx Chapo stays to the southeast of it on the slopes of the Keilberg on the Bohemian side. There are no tracking data for the lynx Juno, who lost his transmitter collar in August. Since he has been moving around widely in the wild area and has staked out his territory, the experts assume that he is still there.