after 200 years, is it restitution in the animal kingdom or just ecologists jerking off? either way, I think it's good news

For the past decade, conservationists have been releasing zoo-bred Eurasian lynx in Germany's  mountains, with the goal of returning them to their natural habitat. The lynx, once targeted by hunters because they threatened farm animals and local game, disappeared from the region nearly 200 years ago.

On Easter Sunday, 2009, officials at Germany's Harz National Park opened the gates to their wooded enclosure and let out two young lynx. The brother and sister, who had been found orphaned by the roadside a few months before, were once again on their own in the wild. And, witnesses said, they didn't look back.

der Spiegel : Predatory Cats Return to the Harz Mountains

If the lynx from the Harz can connect with other populations in the Bohemian and Bavarian forests scientists will worry less about inbreeding, which is now a concern. It will also prove that the Harz population is sufficiently established, since lynx have to spread out to find their own territory.

"It is our challenge to do the best job we can, give the lynx a good start and find out if they are able to survive -- not in computer models but in the real world...If they make it, we will score a win for another big threatened mammal species. If not, we would have to face the fact that in Germany, the age of the lynx and its habitat is definitely over."