Scientists also worry about the dangers of inbreeding. The reintroduced lynxes have not dispersed as far as was hoped. Penned in by roads and development, they have tended to stick to the areas into which they were first introduced. Given the very small number of lynxes from which today’s population is descended, this has raised the threat of inbreeding and a prospect of genetic problems for future populations. While things are better in the Jura than in some other reintroduced lynx populations, the problem will need to be addressed in the long term by increasing connectivity between isolated populations: “Links for the Lynx,” as WWF calls it.

Nonetheless, KORA deems the program a success. From those first 1970s releases, there are some 130 lynx in the Jura today. The effort has now been extended to other areas of the country and lynxes have expanded their range, naturally, into France. Recently, KORA has also relocated individual lynxes into both Austria and Italy, and a further relocation into Germany is in the pipeline. “Lynx have demonstrated that they can live well in a human-dominated environment, such as the Jura,” confirms Breitenmoser. “So the argument that they can no longer survive in our modern world has mostly disappeared.”

Meanwhile, lynx numbers elsewhere in Europe continue to rise. The overall population is now estimated at around 9,000, with the largest concentrations in Finland and the Carpathians. This population is made up of 11 key groups, spread across 23 countries. Only five of the groups are native—indicating the success of reintroduction efforts. The Lynx UK Trust now hopes to reintroduce the cat to Britain, where it was last seen in AD700, and where the environment is in serious need of a predator to control its rampant deer populations. Surveys indicate 91% public support for the idea, with trials proposed for 2017.

The lynx’s future depends upon cross-border cooperation. No single country in central Europe can support a viable population alone. A critical factor to date has been the EU Biodiversity Directive, which compels all member states to protect and restore populations of rare species. Only with this cooperation, Breitenmoser believes, can the scattered populations become better connected, allowing a flow of lynxes over a broad enough area, and reduce inbreeding. “We need the distribution to be broader,” he explains, “but the local abundance to be more limited.”

Meanwhile, the lynx’s enemies must still be won over. This will take education, overturning traditional antagonism towards predators, and convincing the public at large of how the cats benefit the environment for everybody, including hunters. It’s a long process and not something KORA and other conservation bodies can accomplish without political support.