The Iberian lynx nearly went extinct in the 2000s but has recovered through intensive captive breeding and reintroduction programs with significant welfare implications.
Captive breeding subjects lynx to confinement that cannot meet their territorial and predatory needs. Reintroduced individuals face road mortality risk, unfamiliar territory, and challenge establishing hunting skills. Rabbit population crashes from disease cause lynx to suffer nutritional stress. The conservation success is remarkable but each individual animal in the program has experienced welfare costs in service of the species recovery.