Since we first wrote on this subject in 1893 the Spanish ibex has passed through a crisis that came perilously near extirpation. Up to the date named, and for several years later, none of the great landowners of Spain, within whose titles were included the vast sierras and mountain-ranges that form its home, had cherished either pride or interest in the Spanish wild-goat. Some were dimly conscious of its existence on their distant domains: but that was all. Not a scintilla of reproach is here inferred. For these mountain-ranges are so remote and so elevated as often to be almost inaccessible—or accessible only by organised expedition independent of local aid. Their sole human inhabitants are a segregated race of goat-herds, every man of them a born hunter, accustomed from time immemorial to kill whenever opportunity offered—and that regardless of size, sex, or season. That the ibex should have survived such persecution by hardy mountaineers bespeaks their natural cunning. Their survival was due to two causes—first, the antiquated weapons employed, but, more important, the astuteness of the game and the “defence” it enjoyed in the stupendous precipices and snow-fields of those sierras, great areas of which remain inaccessible even to specialised goat-herds, save only for a limited period in summer.
But no wild animal, however astute or whatever its “defence,” can withstand for ever perpetual, skilled human persecution. During the early years of the present century the Spanish ibex appeared doomed beyond hope. Private efforts over such vast areas were obviously difficult, if not impossible.
We rejoice to add that at this eleventh hour a new era of existence has been secured to Capra hispánica at that precise psychological moment when its scant survivors were struggling in their last throes. The change is due to graceful action by the landowners in certain great mountain-ranges; and if our own explorations and our writings on the subject have also tended to assist, none surely will grudge the authors this expression of pride in having helped, however humbly, to preserve not only to Spain, but to the animal-world, one of its handsomest species.
This new era took different forms in different places. In certain sierras—those of less boundless area—the owners have undertaken the preservation of the ibex partly from their realising the tangible asset this game-beast adds to the value of barren mountain-land, and partly in view of the legitimate sport that an increase in stock may hereafter afford.
But the main factor which has assured success (and which in itself led up to the private efforts just named) took origin in the great Sierra de Grédos. This elevated region is the apex of the long cordillera of central Spain, the Carpeto-Vetonico range, which extends from Moncayo, east of Madrid, for some 300 miles through the Castiles and Estremadura, forming the watershed of Tagus and Douro. It separates the two Castiles, and passing the frontier of Portugal is there known as the Serra da Estrella, which, with the Cintra hills, extends to the Atlantic sea-board. Along all this extensive cordillera there is no more favoured resort of ibex than its highest peak, the Plaza de Almanzór, of 2661 metres altitude (= 8700 feet) above sea-level.
In 1905, when the ibex were about at their last gasp, the proprietors of the Nucléo central, which we may translate as the Heart of Grédos, of their own initiative, ceded to King Alfonso XIII. the sole rights-of-chase therein, and His Majesty commissioned the Marquis of Villaviciosa de Asturias to appoint an adequate force of guards.
Six guards were selected from the self-same goat-herds who, up to that date, had themselves been engaged in hunting to extermination the last surviving ibex of the sierra, and whom we had ourselves employed during various expeditions therein.
The ceded area comprised all the best game-country, defined as the “Circo de Grédos”—including the gorge of the Laguna Grande, the Risco del Fraile, Risco del Francés, and that of Ameál de Pablo, together with the wild valley of Las Cinco Lagunas—as shown on rough sketch-plan annexed.
