Spanish Ibex - Preservation

Preservation

The populations of Capra pyrenaica have decreased significantly over the last centuries. This can be due to a combination of contributing factors such as great hunting pressure, agricultural development and habitat deterioration. Around 1890, one of the subspecies, C. pyrenaica lusitanica, also known as the Portuguese ibex, became extinct from its range in the Portuguese Sierra de Geres and Galicia. By the mid-nineteenth century, another of the four subspecies, the Pyrenean ibex, came from the French Pyrenees and the Pyrenean subspecies became extinct in January 2000, when the last adult female died in the Ordesa National Park. There are also a series of threats in an effort towards ibex conservation; such as population overabundance, disease, and potential competition with domestic livestock and other ungulates, along with the negative effects of human disturbance through tourism and hunting. Until recently, ibexes from Southern Spain have also become exposed to diseases and outbreaks like sarcoptic mange. This disease, potentially fatal for infected individuals, unequally affects males and females and it limits the reproductive investment of individuals. Scabies has become the main destabilizing factor in many populations of Iberian ibex.