Acta Zoologica Cracoviensia, 41(1) 1998
Historical biogeography of the lynx in Poland
Abstract:
The earliest certain finds of the lynx Lynx lynx (LINNÉ, 1758) in Poland are those of the mid-Holocene (Neolithic) age. Until the Middle Ages the species was apparently widely distributed throughout the territory. Before the turn of the eighteenth century it was extinct west of the river Vistula. Its range was further diminishing from the west during the first three quarters of the nineteenth century, so that the northeastern and Carpathian populations finally became isolated from each other by the half of that century. Within the first four decades of the twentieth century the species reached its minimal distribution in Poland, being virtually restricted to the Białowieża Primeval Forest and some parts of the Carpathian Forest. During the period from the 1940s to the early 1980s the lynx was generally expanding in Poland, both in range and likely in numbers, so that it was represented by the established populations in most of larger forest complexes in the northeast and in the Carpathians at the end of that interval. Since that time both the northeastern and Carpathian populations have been declining in distribution and numbers, vanishing from several forest complexes in the west of their former range.
