I finally spotted a wild lynx! (after 3 weeks of global cat-tracking)

Plus: Bamboo is genetically hacking pandas & whale songs share patterns with human language

By Dan Fletcher

We did it. After three weeks lugging all my camera equipment around the world, I FINALLY saw a wild cat in the wild. Here’s a first glimpse of the Eurasian lynx, with five more days of tracking ahead:

I’ll tell the story of the frantic sprint through the night to capture this photo in Wednesday’s newsletter. But first I want to introduce you to this beautiful and rugged landscape, where nature and people forge a true coexistence to mutual benefit.

Plus, read to the end to find out who won February’s FUZZ Funds donation from all our paying subscribers.

Following the lynx tracks on the Estonian coast

I'm about an hour north of Tallinn, where the pine forests meet the icy coastline of the Baltic Sea in Lahemaa National Park. To Americans, "national park" conjures up something specific — unspoiled expanses of nature set aside except for a few visitor centers and tourist-laden roads weaving through the park.

Here, as in large parts of the rest of the world, it's a looser designation — a truce forged between nature and human development and families living inside the park. And while there's not a lot of people living here, there's more human activity than you might think — when you're in them, patches of unspoiled forest seem like they stretch forever, only for you to pop out in someone's backyard.

But that isn’t necessarily a problem for wildlife, even for an elusive predator like the lynx. The land inside the park is naturally pretty barren, unable to support huge populations of roe deer that are the lynx’s natural prey in this part of their range. A little bit of human habitation, then, adds resources, hiding spots and opportunity to the land that might all actually make it easier for a lynx to survive the winter.

We spent the morning following some tracks that told this story. One of our trackers, Mark Kaptein, spotted the prints of a mother and her cub weaving through the forest in the snow. We knew we only had about a day before rain and sun would erode the tracks to uselessness, so we set out through the forest, weaving through trees and crossing streams. Some of the group more successfully than others.

The trail eventually ended with success — a small pile of fur left in the snow that was evidence a lynx had made a kill. But it didn't look like any of the animals natural to the park, so we kept following the trail to see if we could learn more.

Sure enough, the track ended outside a farm with goats, turkeys, sheep and other animals running around, including some free-roaming domestic rabbits. One of which looked suspiciously similar to the pile of fur we found back in the field. And then from the farm, another set of tracks led back to the pile of fur with drag marks in the snow. The lynx had clearly found itself a snack at the farm.

The notion that coexistence can actually benefit wildlife, rather than just threaten it, was a recurring theme during our discussions yesterday. And it’s a point that photographer and guide Sebastian Kennerknecht reemphasized to us, too. He and his wife, Rachel, travel constantly photographing some of the most world’s most elusive cats. And sometimes, these cats are most easily found in places with just enough human disruption to create opportunity, without creating danger.

In South Africa, for example, one of the healthiest populations of the elusive serval is actually at a coal processing plant. And in Borneo, Kennerknecht found the best chance of seeing clouded leopards and marbled cats in selectively logged forest.

“You don’t need huge wilderness areas without any people for these animals to exist,” Kaptein said. You just need people to accept that they can coexist alongside with animals, rather than view them as a threat or competition.

Most lynx sightings happen here on the edge of forest and field, where the lynx can both survey the landscape for prey and have a quick habitat to escape back into. Another photo from our first encounter.

That certainly seems the attitude here in Lahemaa, at least towards the lynx. (Wolves, which prey on livestock, are not treated with the same reverence.) As we made our way back through the forest, I couldn't help but wonder about the mother lynx and her cub. While we didn't catch a glimpse of these two particular phantom cats today, the evidence of their successful hunt told a larger story about resilience and adaptation. In this mosaic of forest and farm, wild and tame, these incredible predators are finding ways to survive.

The tracks in the snow may fade with tomorrow's rain, but the lynx will continue their silent patrol through these Estonian woods, ghosts moving between two worlds — a reminder that sometimes the most successful conservation happens not by separating humans and wildlife entirely, but by finding thoughtful ways for both to share the landscape. Or, at bare minimum, at least a little tolerance for one another.

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Thanks to you, help is on the way for the pygmy hippos

Photo by Paul Horner

Great news! The votes are in, and our February FUZZ Funds of $281.66 will be going to Fauna & Flora's Pygmy Hippo conservation program. Thanks to everyone who participated in the vote and helped direct our collective impact toward these endangered forest dwellers. With fewer than 2,500 pygmy hippos remaining in the wild, your support will help train community wardens, purchase essential equipment like GPS units and camera traps, and implement proven conservation strategies in West Africa. Stay tuned for updates on how our contribution is making a difference for these elusive creatures — I’m going to work to talk to a pygmy hippo conservationist this month.

As a reminder, 100% of your paid subscriptions go directly to conservation causes that we choose together as a community each month. Join up with us today and help us make an even broader impact for wildlife in March. 🦛

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Quick Lynx! ;) 🔗

• Scientists discovered bamboo can genetically influence the pandas consuming it. Research from China found microRNAs from bamboo enter pandas' bloodstreams and affect genes related to smell, taste, and pleasure pathways. These tiny genetic hijackers essentially help pandas find bamboo more appealing and extract more nutrition from their nutrient-poor diet. This discovery helps explain how pandas adapted to their unique bamboo-only lifestyle despite their carnivorous ancestry, and could potentially lead to new treatments for both animals and humans. 🐼

• Scientists discovered humpback whale songs share statistical patterns with human language, challenging assumptions about language's uniqueness to humans. Researchers applied methods inspired by how babies learn speech to eight years of whale recordings, revealing the same key statistical properties found in all human languages. While whale song lacks semantic meaning (it's more like music than language), this is still a pretty unexpected commonality between two evolutionarily distant species. 🐋