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Saiga Research Expedition
On 27th June 2015, a 12-day expedition was launched to
investigate the reasons for the mass die-off of Saiga antelopes in
May 2015. (On 5 June the official death toll stood at 134,000
saigas).
The main goal of this field mission was to follow the migration
routes taken by saiga antelope this spring and take samples of the
environmental components; water, soil, and vegetation, which may
have all potentially affected the saigas, as well as investigating
possible links with deaths of domestic animals and speaking to
local people.
The Ustiurt population in Kazakhstan was relatively secure but is now also under threat. There is evidence of much reduced conception rates in Kalmykia, probably because of selective hunting of adult males. The Mongolian subspecies shows no evidence of recent decline, but is of concern because of the population's small size. The cause of the population declines appears to be poaching for meat and horns, which is a result of economic collapse in the rural areas of Kazakhstan and Kalmykia. Saiga horns are also known as ling yang (羚羊) and used in Traditional Chinese Medicine. We suggest that full aerial surveys be carried out on the Betpak-dala (Kazakhstan) and Mongolian populations, and…
Due to dramatic reductions in group size and density, current estimates of abundance are probably substantially lower than the true population size, and the level of uncertainty surrounding these estimates precludes their use for monitoring trends. This has implications for the Government of Kazakhstan's ability to monitor progress towards their agreed conservation goals. The method is potentially widely applicable to species for which historical data on relative abundance and group size are available.
Using a process-orientated generalized linear modelling approach we show that variations in fecundity rates in populations of three species of ungulates with contrasting life histories are associated with density and winter weather in a remarkably similar manner. However, there are differences and we speculate that they are a result of differences in size between the species.