Gabriel increases the population

21.04.2026

On April 20, 2026, another lynx was released into the wild as part of the “Lynx Thuringia – Connecting Europe’s Lynxes” project. In the evening hours, the male lynx named Gabriel explored his new surroundings near Oberhof for the first time. With his arrival, the still-young population in the Thuringian Forest continues to grow—an important step toward the return of this elusive cat to Thuringia. Currently, at least eight independent lynx live in the Thuringian Forest.

Gabriel is a male lynx approximately five to six years old. He comes from the Ardeluța area (Neamț County) in the Romanian Carpathians. He was captured there using a box trap and weighed 23.6 kilograms at the time. Like all animals in the project, he was fitted with a GPS collar that provides important data on his movements and automatically falls off after about a year. This allows researchers to track how Gabriel moves through his new habitat and establishes a territory.