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Featured article by Elena Bykova (Executive Editor) and E.J Milner-Gulland published in Saiga News Issue 20 on page 3. In 2004-2005, the saiga antelope was becoming a high profile species internationally, with the development of the Convention on Migratory Species' Memorandum of Understanding on the conservation of the species, which came into force in 2006.
Mongolian Saiga individuals were fitted with satellite collars in September 2015 by specialists from WWF-Mongolia jointly with the World Conservation Society, Environmental Authority of Gobi-Altai province and rangers from the Saiga Rangers Network. This exercise aims to identify migration routes, habitat range, collect important data to assess the vulnerability of the animal and the severity of impact of existing road infrastructure to this endangered species.
Update by Natalia Yakusheva, CMS Secretariat, published in Saiga News Issue 20 on page 5. More than seventy participants from governments, international organizations, NGOs, and academia gathered together to agree on a concrete set of measures to restore saiga populations in Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Russia, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
Update by E.J. Milner-Gulland, Saiga Conservation Alliance, published in Saiga News Issue 20, on page 6. The recent meeting of the signatories to the MOU on saiga conservation (26th-29th October 2015) was the culmination of months of work by the CMS secretariat and their technical advisors at the SCA and IUCN Antelope Specialist Group, as well as our hosts in Uzbekistan.
Update by Steffen Zuther, ACBK, published in Saiga News Issue 20, on page 8. As mentioned in Saiga News 19, in mid-May 2015 the beginning of a mass die-off was detected in the biggest calving aggregation of the Betpak-Dala population, in the south of Kostanay oblast, Kazakhstan. The die-off lasted for almost a month and affected all the bigger calving aggregations throughout the range of the population.