A lynx cub hit by a car in Vsetín region
8.10.2015, Friends of the Earth Czech Republic (Hnutí DUHA) and the Administration of Beskydy Protected Landscape Area
Friends of the Earth Czech Republic (Hnutí DUHA) and the Administration of Beskydy Protected Landscape Area
A busy road I/57 between Lidečko and Lužná in the Vsetín region claimed the life of a young Eurasian lynx. A car hit the animal on Sunday night. The incident was reported by a local resident who shortly before watched the lynx cub moving in the vicinity of the road without its mother. The stretch of road between Lidečko and Lužná intersects a significant migration corridor of large carnivores identified for protection several years ago based on the study conducted by Friends of the Earth Czech Republic and Nature Conservation Agency of the Czech Republic. The dead lynx is thus sad proof confirming the use the corridor between the Javorníky mountain range and the Vizovice Hills and the area's attractiveness for large carnivores. Friends of the Earth (CZ) and the Beskydy PLA Administration propose to limit the speed in critical sections where the migration corridors intersect the road to make it more secure for animals as well as drivers.
It is worrying that the lynx cub was near the road without its mother. This raises the question of whether the female is still alive; she might have become a victim of another road accident or poaching. Environmentalists recorded a similar case in Lúky pod Makytou in Slovakia last year, where an orphaned cub was found right in the village while at the same time a female named Jarka, which had been followed for several years, stopped appearing on photos from camera traps; at the time she was a mother of three young cubs. Neither Jarka nor her cubs were captured by camera traps or recorded during tracking after the cub was found in the village.
This year, the presence of lynx cubs in the Javorníky Mountains or Vsetín Hills has not been confirmed yet. Camera traps belonging to Friends of the Earth (CZ) and Mr Radek Kyselý, however, captured three different females with seven cubs in the Moravian-Silesian Beskydy. The mortality of lynx in their first year of life is high, though, at around 50 percent. The overall population of lynx on the Moravian-Slovakian border is estimated at around 10 individual adult animals.
Michal Bojda of Friends of the Earth (CZ) commented on the finding: "Very peculiar behaviour of the cub, which was reported to have been playing for several tens of minutes with a domestic cat before being hit by a vehicle, suggests that the young lynx lived for some time without its mother. The loss of a mother sentences all her cubs to death. At this age, they are not yet able to look after themselves."
Dana Bartošová of PLA Administration said: "The improvement of transport safety in the sections of road where the migration of large mammals has been proven is also proposed in the recently designed project ‘Monitoring of large carnivores in the location of European importance Beskydy'. It recommends implementing the road signs ‘Attention, wild animals' with an additional sign restricting the maximum speed to 50kph at night time (from dusk to dawn). The unnecessary death of a rare animal should serve as an impetus for rapid enforcement of this measure in practice."
Contacts:
Michal Bojda, Hnutí DUHA Olomouc, 734 233 993, michal.bojda@hnutiduha.cz
Miroslav Kutal, Hnutí DUHA Olomouc, tel. 728 832 889, miroslav.kutal@hnutiduha.cz
Dana Bartošová, Správa CHKO Beskydy, tel. 607 837 854, dana.bartosova@nature.cz
Translation from press release: Martina Dušková
