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  Frantically Astrid contacted as many experts as she could. Finally she got through to Dr. Sergey Naidenko, a Russian scientist who had studied the Eurasian lynx for twenty years. And, he told her, for eighteen of those years he had recorded sibling aggression among captive lynx and he had come to think that it was normal behavior. But no one had believed him—it was always ascribed to bad management. Astrid was delighted to speak with Naidenko. “It was like finding a guru,” she told me.

  She asked him if he’d had success returning injured cubs to their mothers, and he said yes, 100 percent success. But, he warned, it would have to be done very carefully. At this point, Astrid had to make a tough decision: She knew Brezo needed his mother and her milk, but she also knew that the media and wildlife authorities were watching closely. What if she made a wrong decision and it led to the death of another precious lynx? She would be blamed, perhaps damaging the status of the whole breeding program. But because their goal was to return lynx to the wild, it was vital that the cubs be raised by their mothers. So she decided, with much apprehension, to take the risk.

  Brezo had been away from his mother for a day and a half. First they sprinkled him with Sali’s urine—she often sprayed her cubs. “We tried,” said Astrid, “to cover as much as possible our human smell with Sali’s own perfume.” As soon as Sali saw Brezo, she began “vocalizing sounds of joy.” Once he was in the enclosure, she groomed him and sprayed him and lay down so he could suckle. “Brezo was in lynx heaven,” said Astrid, “and we were so happy and deeply touched by the scene that I still get chills when I recall it.”

  Since then, the team has broken up fights in several subsequent litters. They always occur when the cubs are about six weeks old, and for no apparent reason.

  Mothers and Cubs

  I was able to see firsthand how much Astrid cares for the lynx in the program. She and the head keeper, Juana Bergara, took me first to visit Esperanza, mother of the cub killed the night before. Despite this trauma—or perhaps because of it—she was clearly very, very pleased to see Astrid and Juana. Although all the lynx cubs at the center are raised with limited contact with humans, and prepared, as far as possible, for survival in the wild, Esperanza had been hand-raised and had a special relationship with people.

  As we approached, wearing protective booties and rubber gloves, she gave little breathy sounds of greeting and rubbed up against the wire. She repeatedly butted the wire mesh with her head—a sign of affection, Astrid said. Clearly, she could not get enough of this attention—I had the feeling that this contact was soothing for her after the stress of the night. I heard her purring like a happy domestic cat. She had been found in 2001, Astrid told me, as an almost dead one-week-old lynx cub. She was saved by the Jerez zoo vets and hand-raised. She never saw another lynx until she was almost a year old.

  To provide opportunity for the cubs to learn from their mothers, the families are kept in large outdoor enclosures, where the cubs are taught to hunt by their mothers. Rabbits, of course, are bred for this purpose. In one of the big enclosures, three cubs were playing. Their mother led them toward a handsome black rabbit, but they showed absolutely no desire to want to hurt it, nor did the rabbit show the slightest fear. It almost seemed to want to play! The keeper told me that one of the lynx refused to kill one individual rabbit that remained in the enclosure for several weeks—and thereby witnessed the quick dispatch of many others of his kind. This, of course, is the difficult part of such programs. Astrid told me that she always feels so sorry for the rabbits. It makes it worse that her son, Mario, now four years old, always wants to go and see the rabbits when he visits the facility. And he always asks to bring them home.

  Astrid took me to visit two of the breeding males—they are stunningly beautiful creatures. One lay quite far away, watching us intently. The other was close to the mesh, but spat and hissed at us as we approached. He had lived in the wild until he was three years old, Astrid told me. Then he was brought to the center too badly injured to be released. As we watched him, Astrid was reminded of another injured lynx, Viciosa, who had been sent to her from Andalusia, and I remembered Miguel telling me about her when we met in Barcelona. When he had found her, by following signals from her radio collar, she’d been close to death. She had been badly injured by fighting during the breeding season, and weighed only eleven pounds instead of the average twenty-four pounds or so. Amazingly, with good care and good food, she recovered in three weeks.

  When Astrid received her, she had already been saddled with the name Viciosa (which means “vicious”) by Miguel’s team. “But she wasn’t at all vicious,” Astrid told me, “she just wanted to eat and eat!” When Viciosa was released back into her territory toward the end of breeding season, she immediately coupled with a male, and nine weeks later gave birth to two cubs.

  I was very impressed by Astrid’s facility. There are cameras mounted to cover each outside area and others for the inside of the dens. The TV monitors are on twenty-four hours, monitored by staff or volunteers, throughout the whole year, and with particular intensity during the three months of birthing and cub rearing. All this footage is providing unique information about lynx behavior.

  I was astounded by a truly unique method for collecting blood. Any attempt to anesthetize the lynx, or handle them in any way, is extremely distressing for them. A German scientist had the idea of collecting blood by means of a giant bedbug! Lynx sleep on a layer of cork at night. A small hole is cut in this, and into this space a hungry bedbug is placed. It makes a beeline—or bugline!—for the warm body and starts to suck blood. After twenty minutes (when the bug starts to digest the blood), it is removed from below the sleeping platform, and the blood removed with a syringe. The lynx sleeps on, undisturbed. And the bug can be used again! (No doubt this will cause outrage among People for the Ethical Treatment of Bedbugs!)

  A Tragic Killing

  Before we left, Judy and I saw the infrared footage of the night’s fatal attack. It lasted eight minutes. It began when the victim, up on a ledge in the night quarters, was suddenly, for no apparent reason, attacked by her brother from the back. Then the two started fighting in earnest. The victim, from the start, went on the defensive, lying on her back and kicking with her back legs. After two minutes, the kicking stopped. Esperanza had rushed to the scene instantly and, seizing the victim, tried to pull her away. Three times she managed to separate them, but the aggressor would not give up. Astrid had been called and was there within five minutes—but although she retrieved the cub, it was too late to save her. She had a punctured lung and several broken ribs.

  After the dying cub had been removed, Esperanza behaved strangely. Every time the survivor tried to return to the den, his mother—who seemed unable to carry him in the accepted manner, by the scruff of his neck—dragged him out despite his attempts to resist. This was repeated many times. For some reason Esperanza did not want him in that den.

  Later I heard from Astrid that a careful necropsy had shown that the actual lethal wounds had not been inflicted by the male sibling, as had been thought, but by the mother in her efforts to try to separate her cubs. “Esperanza,” Astrid told me, “was always attentive yet rough with her cubs. Her instinct to separate these two was good, but she was captive-raised, had no lynx playmate as a cub, and thus had no chance to learn her own strength. And that,” said Astrid, “was lethal.”

  The Future of the Lynx in the Wild

  That evening Astrid, Toñe, and Javitxu drove Judy and me into the Doñana National Park lynx habitat. Of course we saw no lynx, though Javitxu told us that just the previous week he had seen a mother with three cubs playing in one of the many open clearings among the low trees.

  During the drive, we discussed the many difficulties and the many problems that lie ahead—the protection of suitable habitat, for one thing. Even the national parks are not always safe. Part of Doñana National Park’s buffer zone had been taken over for a golf course. Also, each year, hundreds of thousands of people make
a pilgrimage to the Virgin of Rocio festival, in honor of a statuette of the Virgin Mary that once supposedly magically appeared in a tree. Unfortunately, the pilgrims pass through prime lynx habitat, right through the national park, in the middle of the breeding season. Then, too, there are more tourists coming into the area, attracted by the beautiful beaches. And as road traffic increases, so do the numbers of lynx killed on roads (at the time about 5 percent of all deaths).

  Nonetheless, as we discussed over a delicious dinner in a small and friendly restaurant, there is much that is positive. For one thing, the lynx population in Doñana is now stable at about forty to fifty individuals. It is of course the number of breeding females, and the number of young born each year, that counts. During recent years, there have been ten to fifteen females.

  And work has started on the construction of tunnels under the roads in the hope that the lynx will learn to use them—as animals do in other places. They are thinking about building bridges over the roads, too. Finally, and most importantly, they are working to increase the number of rabbits.

  We poured the last of the Spanish red wine and raised our glasses to the restoration of the Iberian lynx and the dedicated people who are devoting their all to making a dream come true.

  Postscript

  Later, in the fall of 2008, I heard from Astrid that the captive breeding program was, by mid-2008, ahead of projections. There were, she said, fifty-two lynx in captivity, twenty-four of which were born in the facility. This means, said Astrid, that provided the release area is ready for them, reintroduction of captive-born lynx could take place in 2009—one year ahead of schedule. And because not one Iberian lynx had been killed in a road accident in Doñana since late 2006, it seems that the area may be suitable for reintroducing captive-born lynx.

  I then heard from Miguel that the number of territorial breeding females was up to nineteen, and there were between seventeen and twenty-one new cubs alive in September 2008. While the verdict is still out as to whether or not Spain’s magnificent Iberian lynx will once again have a suitable habitat that allows it to thrive in the wild—a protected area that is safe from pilgrims, golf courses, and the like—for now the news is encouraging.

  John Hare, adventurer, explorer, and passionate advocate for the wild Bactrian camel, shown here with domestic Bactrian near the northern border of Tibet, surveying a sanctuary for their highly endangered wild cousins. (Yuan Lei)

  Bactrian Camel

  (Camelus bactrianus ferus)

  In the Gobi Deserts of Mongolia and China, in some of the most desolate country in the world, truly wild Bactrian (two-humped) camels still live. Wild Bactrian camels were captured and domesticated about four thousand years ago. Gradually, over time, the descendants of those first domesticated herds have become genetically differentiated from their wild relatives.

  Everything I know about these camels I have learned from John Hare, the man who has done more to save them than anyone else. Indeed, but for him and the Chinese and Mongolian colleagues he works with and inspires, the wild Bactrian camels would almost certainly have reached the point of no return. I first met John Hare in 1997, just before the publication of his book The Lost Camels of Tartary.

  John was once in the British Foreign Service—one of the old brigade, tough without being burly, efficient, determined, and with a passion for adventure. Over the years, we have talked a great deal about his mission to save the Bactrian camels. When we first met, I knew no more about them than he knew about apes. I rode on a domestic Bactrian in the Kolmarden Zoo in Stockholm—just to see what it was like—and John glimpsed a few wild chimpanzees when he was serving in Nigeria. But we are both basically creatures of the wild places, and only leave them to try to save them. John has generously shared his knowledge with me, written for me something of his years with the Chinese and the Mongolians—and the wild camels.

  “My desert adventures—that have, over the past twelve years, enabled me to visit the four enclaves in the Gobi in China and Mongolia where the wild Bactrian camel still survives,” he wrote, “began in neither of those two countries but in Moscow. I was there, in 1992, to stage an exhibition of environmental photographs in the Polytechnic Museum. At the reception, I spotted a man in a dark suit who sported a Stalin look-alike mustache, and I asked him how he was managing to survive in lawless Moscow. For Moscow was a dangerous place at that time after both communism and law and order had collapsed. At that moment, camels and the Gobi Desert could not have been further from my mind.

  “‘I work for the Russian Academy of Sciences,’ Professor Peter Gunin said in hesitant English. ‘I lead the joint Russian/Mongolian expeditions to the Gobi Desert. That takes me away from Moscow every year and so I manage to survive.’

  “‘Do you ever take foreigners on your expeditions?’ I asked. ‘I’d give my right arm to go with you.’

  “Peter Gunin stroked his bushy mustache. ‘There’s no market in Moscow for a foreigner’s right arm,’ he said with a smile. ‘Even the Mafia aren’t interested in them. What can you do? Are you a scientist?’

  “‘Unfortunately, not,’ I replied, searching desperately for something relevant to say. ‘I could take photos. I could come as your cameraman.’

  “‘My colleague, Anatoly, is coming on the next expedition as the official photographer,’ Peter replied. ‘Is there nothing that you can do that has a scientific background? I will have to justify your inclusion to the Academy.’

  “‘Do you use camels on your expeditions?’ I asked. ‘I’ve had a good deal of experience working with camels in Africa.’

  “‘That’s it,’ he cried. ‘Camels! We need a camel expert. We need someone to undertake a survey of the wild Bactrian camel population in the Mongolian Gobi.’

  “‘I know nothing about the wild Bactrian camel,’ I said. ‘Nothing at all. I didn’t even know there was such an animal.’

  “‘You will learn all about the wild Bactrian camel if you come with us,’ Peter Gunin said. “He gave me a broad wink. ‘Provided that you can get the foreign exchange.’

  “‘How much do you want?’

  “‘Fifteen hundred dollars, plus your air-fare.’

  “‘I’ll try to find it,’ I said without the slightest hesitation. I had no idea how I was going to get hold of it or whether I would get leave of absence from my job. I only knew that I had to go with this amiable Russian professor into the Mongolian Gobi.”

  As a result of that chance meeting, John has made seven expeditions into the deserts of China and Mongolia and probably knows as much as or more than anyone else about the wild camels, their habits, range, population status, and history.

  Bactrian camels feed mainly on shrubs; their humps act as a rich fat store that allows them to go for long periods without food. They are also able to go for long periods without water—which is not, contrary to popular belief, stored in the humps. When water is located, they are able to drink as much as fifteen gallons at one time in order to replenish reserves they have lost. Two hundred years ago, Bactrian camels ranged across the deserts of southern Mongolia, northwestern China, and into Kazakhstan in habitats ranging from rocky mountains to plains and high sand dunes. Years of persecution have reduced the species to four small fragmented populations, three in northwest China (approximately 650) and one in Mongolia (about 450).

  The Primary Enemy—Human

  Their enemies are the humans who hunt them, prospect for oil in the desert sands where they struggle to survive, conduct nuclear tests in the heart of their homeland, and poison their limited grazing by using potassium cyanide in a search for gold. There could be fewer than a thousand—they are more endangered than the giant panda.

  “In my quest for this timid and elusive creature,” John wrote me, “I have led expeditions, four of them on domesticated Bactrian camels, into some of the most breathtakingly beautiful yet hostile country imaginable. I have traveled through forbidden areas, closed for over forty years, made the first recorded crossing of the G
ashun Gobi from north to south, and been fortunate to stumble across a lost outpost of the ancient city of Lou Lan. And so, whether I was walking behind domestic camels, Bactrians or Dromedaries, or scanning the sky-line for their wild relatives, the camel has enabled me to do what I like doing best: exploring.”

  John has developed an immense respect for these amazing creatures, so ideally suited to their desert environment. “Recently,” he told me, “I traveled with Pasha, a one-humped dromedary camel, for three and a half months across the Sahara. As I rode him day after day he became a wonderful companion. In the end he was following me about like a dog, sniffing at my trouser pocket, which held his beloved dried dates.”

  In 1997 John set up the Wild Camel Protection Foundation (WCPF), a registered charity in the United Kingdom, to raise funds for conservation efforts to protect the Bactrian camels in the wild. The WCPF, working with eminent Chinese scientists, persuaded the Chinese government to establish the 67,500-square-mile Arjin Shan Lop Nur Wild Camel National Nature Reserve—which is bigger than Poland and nearly the size of Texas.

  It is wild and desolate desert country where few living things can survive since there is almost no water for most of the year save salty slush that bubbles up from under the ground. At one time, there was some fresh water from the spring snowmelt from the mountains. But the construction of dams and overuse of water for agriculture have more or less eliminated this, except in the mountainous area in the south of the reserve. The wild Bactrian camels have learned to survive by drinking the salty water that the domestic Bactrian would not touch—although the wild camels much prefer to drink sweet water if they can get it.