Eurasian Lynx

Unlike the smaller lynxes, this one routinely kills deer several times its own weight, ambushing from cover within a few bounds. Paws spread wide in snow and work as loading pads, which is why it holds ground that wolves have to work harder for in deep winter.

It was shot out of most of western and central Europe by the early twentieth century. Reintroductions from the 1970s onwards into Switzerland, Slovenia, Austria and the Czech–Bavarian forests, together with natural spread from the Carpathians, have put lynx back across a large part of the range. The limit now is not habitat or prey but poaching and road mortality in small founder populations.