SCALP

Viable populations of large carnivores require large, connected living spaces. Habitat loss and fragmentation and the decline in prey populations have led, in combination with direct persecution by humans, to the eradication of lynx in western Europe in the 19th century. Today, the lynx is protected by law.

One of the largest natural regions left in Europe are the Alps – 200 000 km² of forests, meadows and alpine peaks. However, the Alps are also politically and culturally heavily fragmented. Therefore, it is imperative that we have cross-boundary concepts for the management of lynx. The SCALP project organises this transboundary cooperation regarding the conservation and the management of lynx in the Alps. Today, the status of the lynx is monitored by SCALP experts from all Alpine countries. The goal of SCALP is (1) to develop monitoring standards allowing for the comparison of collected data from different countries; (2) to publish status reports regularly; (3) to develop conservation and management concepts; and (4) to compile expertise on the lynx in the Alps. Additionally, knowledge gaps should be eliminated to make discussions about lynx, hunting and conservation more objective. For the future of the lynx, it is important to find agreements on management measures with the local communities, and to get the Alpine countries to commit to common goals. The Alps are an extraordinary heterogenetic region with several languages and different local administration systems. This will not make it easy to implement an Alpine wide Management plan for the conservation of the lynx. In the process of the SCALP project, the SCALP criteria were developed to distinguish between certain and uncertain records.

Since 2013, further areas have been incorporated into the project. Experts from the Alps, Dinaric mountains, Vosges, Jura mountains, Palatinate forest, Black forest, Swabian Jura and surrounding areas use the same criteria and present their distribution data in the same map, allowing for a direct comparison. Thanks to the work of Linking Lynx, the area has been steadily expanded since then.