$17m for animal groups in will

A Spanish woman left €3 million ($5.85 million) in her will to help protect the Iberian lynx, the world's most endangered feline species.

The woman bequeathed a total of €9 million to animal charities, officials in southern Andalucia said. A six-year-old captive breeding programme for the lynx is based in Andalucia's Donana National Park. El Pais said the woman died in October 2008 in Spain's Canary Islands, at the age of aged 60, but that little else was known about her.

Barely 200 Iberian lynxes are believed to remain in the wild, mostly in protected areas of southern Spain.