Mating season provides plenty of photographic evidence

05.03.2026

The lynx released as part of the project are currently being spotted particularly frequently on camera traps, mainly due to the mating season, which peaks in February. During this phase, the males in particular are increasingly on the move to find females and mark their territories.

For example, the tagged lynx Ionel has been documented several times near Oehrenstock in the Ilm district, and the male Viorel near Sachsenbrunn; both were caught in the wild in the Romanian Carpathians. In the Schmalkalden-Meiningen district, Frieda and Kilian, both of whom came from enclosures, regularly appear in the photographs. Other photos show the lynx Osram in the Thuringian Slate Mountains near Lichtentanne; Osram is an orphaned lynx that was relocated from Bavaria in the summer of 2024 and now has its own territory in southern Thuringia. Other immigrants from northern Bavaria have also been registered in recent months: a male with the identification number B5001m, who has been known to the project team since autumn 2014, and a female with the identification number R5010w, who has had cubs south of Masserberg in the past two years.

With the help of camera traps, the lynxes can still be reliably detected even if their collar transmitters have fallen off. The team is eagerly awaiting the outcome of the breeding season: if there are offspring in the spring, the young animals could also be recorded by camera traps from late summer onwards.