On the 28th and 29th October, the University of Algarve (Faro) welcomed the 1st Seminar of the Iberian Lynx in Portugal, organized by LPN – Liga para a Protecção da Natureza.
This event, which had the High Patronage of the Head of State, reunited almost 200 people, including Portuguese and Spanish researchers, farmers, hunters, landowners, students and delegates of public and private entities, which debated for the first time in Portugal the conservation of this threatened feline.

The first day of the seminar was dedicated to the historical and current situation of the Iberian lynx in Portugal, where several national projects on behalf of this species’ in-situ conservation were presented, including the LIFE Habitat Lince Abutre project. On this day, there was still room to talk about the Spanish Strategy for the Conservation of the Iberian Lynx, with emphasis on projects taking place in Andalusia, and about the ex-situ conservation, where results on the Captive Breeding Programmes (Spain and Portugal) were presented.

The second day of the seminar was centered on public participation, where we emphasize the communication presented by CIS (Centro de Investigação e Intervenção Social), one of the partners of the LIFE Habitat Lince Abutre project. CIS presented the first results obtained in the scope of the project, about the perspectives of local communities on the conservation of biodiversity and the Iberian lynx. ICNB (Instituto da Conservação da Natureza e da Biodiversidade) and ANPC (Associação Nacional de Proprietários e Produtores de Caça), partners of the LIFE project, were also present at this event.

The Project considered this initiative very positive, not only for enabling the share of information (among specialists) on the Iberian lynx conservation, in an Iberian perspective, but especially for the interaction, debate and participation registered by all its participants, from researchers to hunters, national authorities, politicians, tourism and the media, among others.