The Iberian lynx has come back
A B1 Spanish reading built on the present perfect: how the Iberian lynx has gone from fewer than two hundred animals in the wild to more than two thousand in Spain and Portugal.
El lince ibérico ha vuelto
Reading for practice
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The text follows the recovery of the Iberian lynx, a cat that lives in the wild only in Spain and Portugal. Twenty years ago fewer than two hundred were left, in Doñana and Sierra Morena; today more than two thousand live on the peninsula. It covers the shortage of rabbits, the breeding centres and releases, the GPS collars, the animal crossings built under roads, the agreements signed by landowners, and the change of the species category from endangered to vulnerable. Sixteen cards work on the tense and the vocabulary, and three questions close the article.
Hace unos veinte años este animal estaba a punto de desaparecer. Quedaban menos de doscientos ejemplares en libertad, repartidos en dos zonas del sur de España: Doñana y Sierra Morena. Desde entonces la situación ha cambiado mucho, y hoy viven más de dos mil linces en la península.
Uno de los principales problemas ha sido la comida. El lince ibérico caza sobre todo conejos y un adulto come cerca de uno al día. Varias enfermedades han reducido mucho las poblaciones de conejo en el campo, y sin conejos suficientes el lince no ha podido recuperarse solo.
Los biólogos han criado linces en centros especiales y después los han soltado en el campo. Han nacido crías en Andalucía, en Castilla-La Mancha, en Extremadura y también en Portugal. Muchos linces llevan un collar con GPS, y los técnicos han seguido sus movimientos durante años.
Las carreteras han sido otro gran enemigo. Los atropellos son una de las principales causas de muerte de la especie. Para reducir el riesgo, se han construido pasos de fauna bajo algunas carreteras y se han puesto vallas en algunos tramos peligrosos.
Los dueños de las fincas también han participado. Muchos han firmado acuerdos para cuidar el monte y aumentar el número de conejos en sus tierras.
El trabajo ha dado resultado. La Unión Internacional para la Conservación de la Naturaleza ha cambiado la categoría del lince ibérico: ya no aparece como especie en peligro, sino como especie vulnerable. Vulnerable sigue siendo una categoría de riesgo y el trabajo no ha terminado.
¿Has visto alguna vez un animal salvaje en libertad? ¿Qué especie ha vuelto a tu región en los últimos años? ¿Has visitado un parque natural cerca de tu casa?
About this article
What you'll learn
The present perfect: haber in the present plus a participle, agreement carried by haber alone, the place of no and of object pronouns, alguna vez for asking about experience, and se with a compound tense. Field vocabulary too: ejemplar, cría, atropello, monte, pinceles, patillas.
The text follows the recovery of the Iberian lynx, a cat that lives in the wild only in Spain and Portugal. Twenty years ago fewer than two hundred were left, in Doñana and Sierra Morena; today more than two thousand live on the peninsula. It covers the shortage of rabbits, the breeding centres and releases, the GPS collars, the animal crossings built under roads, the agreements signed by landowners, and the change of the species category from endangered to vulnerable. Sixteen cards work on the tense and the vocabulary, and three questions close the article.
After reading
Article learning block
Phrases, words, grammar, and quick practice from this text.
Phrases for training
Add useful phrases to SRS or mark them as already known.
estaba a punto de desaparecer
newit was about to disappear
Estar a punto de plus an infinitive says something was on the very edge of happening. Estar carries the tense, the second verb never changes.
The standard way to say almost happened without using casi.
sobre todo
newmainly, above all
Read as two words it looks like on top of everything, but sobre todo means mainly or especially. Sobretodo written as one word is an overcoat.
Very frequent in writing, and easy to misread the first time.
una de las principales causas
newone of the main causes
Uno or una de los or las plus a plural noun. The number word agrees with the noun: una de las causas, uno de los problemas.
A careful way to state a cause without claiming it is the only one.
ha dado resultado
newit has worked, it has paid off
Dar resultado means to work or to pay off. Resultado carries no article here: dar resultado, not dar un resultado.
A set phrase for saying an effort succeeded.
Key words
Vocabulary that carries the school-day topic.
los pinceles
pinceles
the tufts of hair on the ears
A pincel is a paintbrush, and the same word names the pointed tuft of black hair on a lynx ear.
Shows how Spanish reuses an everyday object to describe an animal.
las patillas
patillas
sideburns
Patillas are the sideburns a man grows in front of his ears, and Spanish uses the same word for the hair on the sides of a lynx face. The word actually comes from pata plus the diminutive -illa, though the two meanings no longer look alike.
A common word for describing faces, human and animal.
el ejemplar
ejemplares
an individual animal or plant
As a noun, un ejemplar is one individual of a species, or one physical copy of a book. It does not mean an example, which is un ejemplo.
The word every nature text uses for counting animals.
la cría
crías
the young of an animal
La cría is a baby animal, and the same word names the activity of breeding. The related verb is criar, to raise.
One word covers cub, kitten, chick and calf.
el atropello
atropellos
being hit by a vehicle
Spanish has one noun for the whole event of a vehicle running someone or something over. The verb is atropellar.
English needs a phrase where Spanish needs one word.
el monte
el monte
uncultivated land with bushes and trees
El monte does mean a mountain, but in texts about the countryside it usually means wild land covered in scrub and trees, flat or not.
Reading it as mountain here would change the whole sentence.
Grammar in context
Patterns from the text worth noticing after reading.
haber in the present plus a participle
la situación ha cambiado
the situation has changed
This tense is built from the present of haber (he, has, ha, hemos, habéis, han) plus a participle, nearly always in -ado or -ido, though some are irregular, like vuelto or visto. It reports a past event whose result still counts now, which is why desde entonces goes with it.
The tense Spain uses by default for anything felt as recent or still open.
only haber agrees
Han nacido crías
cubs have been born
Haber agrees with the subject, han for crías, but the participle stays nacido. Spanish never writes han nacidas.
Stops the commonest mistake learners make with this tense.
where no goes
no ha podido recuperarse
it has not been able to recover
No stands in front of haber, and nothing at all comes between haber and the participle. Adverbs go before or after the pair: no ha podido, ha podido siempre.
Word order here is fixed, unlike English, where never can sit in the middle.
asking about experience
Has visto alguna vez
have you ever seen
Alguna vez, meaning ever, asks about a whole life up to now. In Spain it goes with this tense: has visto, has visitado; in much of Latin America you hear ¿alguna vez viste? Visto is one of the irregular participles, from ver.
This is how people ask each other about experiences.
se when the doer is not named
se han construido pasos de fauna
wildlife crossings have been built
Se plus a verb reports what was done without saying who did it. The verb follows the thing built, so plural pasos gives se han construido.
Reports, signs and news use this instead of a passive.
the pronoun goes first
los han soltado
they have released them
With a compound tense the object pronoun sits in front of the whole block: los han soltado. It can never go between haber and the participle.
Placing it wrongly is the mistake that marks a sentence as foreign.
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