Pedro Sarmento (1968–2026), architect of Iberian lynx recovery in Portugal

Pedro Sarmento, the architect of Iberian lynx (Lynx pardinus) reintroduction to Portugal, whose work was instrumental in the species’ reclassification from critically endangered to vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species™, died suddenly on 16 January 2026. He was 57. Pedro was born in Porto, graduated from the University of Porto with a degree in biology, and obtained his PhD from the University of Aveiro. His career in conservation began at the Serra da Malcata Nature Reserve, where the Iberian lynx had been the rationale for the area's protected status since the early 1980s. We first met Pedro during those early years at Malcata, when he was a young biologist with an already singular focus on the lynx. Over the years that followed, we watched him rise to become director of the reserve—a role he held before committing fully to the reintroduction and monitoring program that would define the rest of his career. From start to finish, he devoted three decades of his life to this species. From January 2002 to May 2003, Pedro initiated and led the first comprehensive national survey of the Iberian lynx in Portugal, a career milestone. The effort was exhaustive, yet not a single lynx occurrence was confirmed. This devastating but clarifying result showed the species was functionally extinct in Portugal (Sarmento et al., 2005). Rather than treating this finding as the end, Pedro treated it as a starting point. He authored the national Action Plan for the Conservation of the Iberian Lynx in Portugal, approved in May 2008, which explicated the framework for habitat restoration, prey recovery, captive breeding, and eventual reintroduction (Sarmento et al., 2009). He also coauthored the national ex situ conservation action plan, represented Portugal on the peninsular Iberian Lynx Working Group, and served with the IUCN Cat Specialist Group. The reintroduction began in December 2014 in the Guadiana Valley of southeastern Portugal, within the EU LIFE Iberlince project (2011–2018), and continued under LIFE Lynxconnect from 2020. When the first two animals were released near São João de Caldeireiros in 2015, Pedro spent months in the field, camping alongside monitoring teams to ensure the animals’ successful adaptation. The results exceeded all projections. By 2022, Portugal's reintroduced population had reached 32 breeding females—surpassing the program's target more than a decade ahead of schedule. By the end of 2024, the Portuguese population had grown to 354 individuals. The Iberian lynx's global population, numbering fewer than 100 individuals in 2002, surpassed 2000 by 2024, prompting its reclassification to vulnerable (Rodríguez, 2024), a milestone to which Pedro's work in Portugal contributed directly and substantially. What distinguished Pedro's approach was his recognition that species reintroduction is as much an institutional and logistical challenge as a biological one. Most land in the Guadiana Valley is privately owned, and the program's success depended on cooperation from landowners, farmers, hunters, and rural communities. Pedro was not one for small talk or easy compromise; his priority was always the species, pursued with a directness that left little room for ambiguity. Yet it was precisely this focus that allowed him to build the institutional framework and the agreements on which the program depended. Though the Iberian lynx defined his career, Pedro's interests extended across biodiversity conservation, from carnivore diet studies to surveys of birds, amphibians, and reptiles, to the conservation of the cinereous vulture (Aegypius monachus). He was also a gifted scientific illustrator and nature photo- and videographer, pursuits he characteristically kept quiet about. Those who knew him in the field described a man of exceptional rigor and quiet determination, someone who could identify a lynx from its traces, who routinely worked 12- to 14-h days, and who led not through persuasion but by example and always with kindness. His focus on results was total. The recovery of the Iberian lynx from the brink of extinction is frequently cited as the greatest conservation success for any cat species worldwide. But no account of the Portuguese chapter of this story can be written without Pedro at its center. He confirmed the species’ absence in Portugal, designed the plan for its return, built the institutional architecture, supervised the reintroductions (sleeping in the field for months to ensure each animal's survival), and lived to see the population thrive beyond expectations. In recent years, he presented these results at international conferences and workshops, conveying not only the science but the persistence and focus that made success possible. Pedro is survived by a population of Iberian lynx now roaming free and breeding across the Alentejo and Algarve regions of Portugal, a living legacy that will endure. Wherever there is a lynx in Portugal today, Pedro's fingerprints are on the path that led to it. For those of us who had the privilege of working with him, we are better researchers because of him. He taught us that conservation cannot be understood by isolating its parts, that species, landscapes, and people are inseparable, and that success depends on working across all of them at once. This was not something he theorized; he practiced it day after day in the field. He created space for others—students, collaborators, and friends—to learn through observation, persistence, and time spent on the ground. That way of working, and of seeing the world, stays with us.