Due to their large home ranges, avoiding humans, predominantly night activity pattern, low population densities, camouflage and living in environments with a dense vegetation cover, direct observation of the Eurasian lynx, obtaining various data and noninvasive genetic samples are difficult to perform and time-consuming. Monitoring methods using scent stations or hair traps are usually based on cats’ behavioural response to catnip with rubbing or so called catnip response. From May 2017 to the end of January 2018, at ZOO Ljubljana, in the enclosure with three Eurasian lynxes we tested the effectiveness of the noninvasive sampling method with new, improved scent stations or so called active coil spring hair traps, which enable the active capture of hair with hair roots and individual hair capture of only one specimen. The scent station we developed in the master's thesis is suitable and efficient in collecting noninvasive genetic samples using passive hair traps and active coil spring hair traps. The method in combination with phototraps is also important in terms of monitoring the population with the help of videos. In the laboratory, we checked that the samples contained enough hair for genetic analysis, and then we analysed them and compared the effectiveness of individual methods. Using the analysis of microsatellite sequences and quality indexes, we determined that the sample with ten hairs with hair roots is the most suitable for optimal DNA isolation and genotyping.
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