I was really happy to hear from my Spanish contacts about this Spanish woman who left 3million Euros in her will to help protect the Iberian lynx, the world's most endangered cat. The noble lady in fact bequeathed a total of nine million Euros to animal charities, one-third of which will go to the lynxes.
The woman died in October 2008 in Spain's Canary Islands at the age of 60. Little else is known about her.
The Iberian lynx was once distributed over the entire Iberian Peninsula but is now restricted to very small areas mostly in protected areas of southern Spain. Barely 200 Iberian lynxes are believed to remain in the wild. At the start of the 20th century there were around 100,000 in Spain and Portugal.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists the species as "critically endangered". Its critical status is mainly due to habitat loss, poisoning, road casualties, feral dogs and poaching. The habitat loss is mainly due to infrastructure development, urban & resort development and tree monoculture.
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