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The project Status and Conservation of the Alpine Lynx Population SCALP is an ongoing programme aiming to coordinate the Eurasian lynx Lynx lynx monitoring, conservation and management activities in the Alps, but the monitoring approach has recently been expanded to the neighbouring Dinaric and Jura Mountains. The long-term goal of the SCALP is to help the still small and isolated reintroduced populations to expand and to recover in co-existence with people. The process is advanced and supervised by the SCALP Expert Group, which also prepares yearly distribution maps.

Eurasian lynx Lynx lynx was reintroduced to the Dinaric Mountains in 1973 to bring back an extinct autochthonous keystone species, but also to enrich the hunting grounds. The institutions involved in the reintroduction were aware of the danger of genetic isolation and warned about the importance of connectivity between the lynx populations in the Dinaric Mountains and the Western Alps for their long-term stability. Unfortunately, these populations never connected and the once thriving Dinaric population declined dramatically. Today, lynx in the Dinaric Mountains and the neighbouring south-eastern Alps are again on the brink of extinction. To prevent this, reinforcement of the population is currently taking place within an EU-funded “LIFE Lynx” project. While the main threat is indisputable – the population is highly inbred – the relative importance of the other factors causing the decline is still under debate, especially because the reintroduced lynx in the Dinaric Mountains was legally hunted for more than two decades. Here, we describe the most important historical events which enabled the lynx to recolonise Slovenia, Croatia, Northeastern Italy and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and highlight the main management decisions that were made during the lynx population expansion. Since the hunters were the promotors of the reintroduction efforts but had also carried out all the hunting activities, we discuss also the relevance of hunting for the lynx population development in the region.

Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx) was extirpated from the Northern Dinaric Mountains and South- Eastern Alps in the beginning of 20th century. However, in 1973 foresters and hunters in Slovenia reintroduced six (some of them closely-related) lynx from Slovakia to the Northern Dinaric Mountains. The reintro-duction was initially successful and the population and range of lynx increased and spread south to Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BIH) but remained isolated. The expansion towards the north was slower ; nevertheless lynx presence was documented in Italy and Austria during the 1980s. Since 1978 lynx were legally hunted in Slovenia, Croatia, and BIH. During the 1990s, lynx population size started decreasing and the range expansion stopped. Legal hunting declined and stopped by the ear-ly 2000s, but the population continued to decline. Genetic analyses revealed that the population was highly inbred and that the effective population size has dramatically decreased after the 1990s. There were all indications that without integration of new individuals, the population would collapse. In 2017, we started with the LIFE lynx project with the main aim to prevent the extinction of the Dinaric and South-Eastern Alps lynx population. The main goal of the project is to integrate fourteen lynx from the Carpathian lynx population of Romania and Slovakia and reinforce the Dinaric-SE Alpine population. This reinforcement is the first step to secure the existence of the population, while en-suring long-term viability will require connecting the Dinaric and South- Eastern Alps population with other lynx populations in Europe.