Pyrenean Ibex

Summary

The Pyrenean ibex (Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica), known in Spanish and Aragonese as the bucardo, was one of the subspecies of the Iberian ibex, a wild goat of the mountains of the Iberian Peninsula. It inhabited the high country of the Pyrenees in northern Spain and the far south of France, where males carried large, thick horns that curved outward, back, and up.

From the nineteenth century onward the bucardo was reduced by hunting and competition with domestic livestock until it survived only as a small remnant in and around Ordesa y Monte Perdido National Park in the Spanish Pyrenees. By 1900 fewer than a hundred remained, and from 1910 the population is reported never to have risen above forty. Across the twentieth century the numbers slid steadily downward, to a handful and finally to a single animal.

That last individual, a female named Celia, was captured and radio-collared in 1999 so that biologists could monitor her. On 6 January 2000 she was found dead, crushed beneath a fallen tree. With her death the subspecies became extinct — but, unusually, her cells had been preserved.

In 2003 a team of Spanish and French scientists used those cells to clone Celia, and a cloned kid was born alive on 30 July 2003. It died within minutes from a lung defect. The bucardo thus became the first extinct animal brought back, however briefly, through cloning — and the only one to have gone extinct twice.

Decline Timeline

Profile

The Pyrenean ibex was a sturdy mountain goat adapted to steep, rocky terrain at high elevation. Males bore the heavy, ridged horns characteristic of the Iberian ibex, sweeping outward and back before curving upward; females had shorter, more cylindrical horns. The coat changed with the seasons, and the animal moved between high summer pastures and more sheltered ground in winter.

It was one of several subspecies into which the Iberian ibex (Capra pyrenaica) is divided. The bucardo occupied the northeastern, Pyrenean end of the species' range. As that range contracted under human pressure, the bucardo's distribution shrank from the broader Pyrenees down to the protected valleys of Ordesa y Monte Perdido National Park, which became its final refuge.

By the late twentieth century the surviving animals were few enough to be counted individually and known to researchers. The subspecies' last decades are therefore documented with painful precision: a small, ageing population, monitored as it dwindled toward a single survivor.

The Decline

The bucardo's long decline was driven primarily by hunting, which from the nineteenth century steadily thinned its numbers, compounded by competition with domestic goats and sheep for mountain grazing and by the diseases and disturbance that accompanied pastoralism. By 1900 the subspecies had fallen below a hundred individuals, and from 1910 onward its numbers are reported never to have exceeded forty.

Protection came, but late and against a population already too small and too genetically narrow to recover. Confined to the Ordesa area, the remnant herd aged and failed to replace itself. Through the 1980s and 1990s the count dwindled into the low double digits and then into single figures, a slow attrition that conservation efforts could slow but not reverse.

By the late 1990s only one animal remained. The bucardo had reached the condition that defines an endling: a subspecies reduced to a single living individual, with no possibility of natural reproduction and extinction already, in effect, certain.

Why It Vanished

Aftermath

Because skin cells had been taken from Celia in 1999 and cryopreserved, the bucardo did not pass entirely beyond reach. In 2003 a research team led by Jose Folch attempted to clone her, transferring nuclei from her preserved cells into eggs and implanting the resulting embryos into surrogate mothers — domestic goats and goat-ibex hybrids.

On 30 July 2003 a cloned female kid was delivered alive by caesarean section. It was, for a few minutes, a living Pyrenean ibex once more. But the newborn suffered from a severe malformation of the lungs, including an extra lobe, and it died very shortly after birth, unable to breathe. The experiment is widely regarded as the first instance of de-extinction, the first time an extinct animal had been brought back, even momentarily, through cloning.

The bucardo therefore carries a bleak distinction: it is the only taxon to have gone extinct twice. Its legacy is twofold — a cautionary tale about how a once-protected mountain animal can still be lost, and a foundational case in the scientific and ethical debate over whether, and how, extinct life should be recreated.

Lessons

References

• Pyrenean ibex Wikipedia
• First Extinct-Animal Clone Created National Geographic
• First birth of an animal from an extinct subspecies (Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica) by cloning Theriogenology (Folch et al., 2009)
• Capra pyrenaica (Iberian Ibex) IUCN Red List