The saiga (Saiga tatarica) is a Critically Endangered antelope which originally inhabited a vast area of the Eurasian steppe zone from the foothills of the Carpathians and Caucasus into Dzungaria and Mongolia. They also lived in North America during the Pleistocene. Today the nominate subspecies (Saiga tatarica tatarica) is only found in one location in Russia (steppes of the North-West Precaspian region) and three areas in Kazakhstan (the Ural, Ustiurt and Betpak-dala populations). A proportion of the Ustiurt population migrates south to Uzbekistan and occasionally Turkmenistan in winter. It is extinct in China and southwestern Mongolia. The Mongolian subspecies (Saiga tatarica mongolica) is found only in western Mongolia.
After a rapid decline they were nearly completely exterminated in the 1920s, but they were able to recover and by 1950 there were again two million of them in the steppes of the USSR.
Its population fell drastically following the collapse of the Soviet Union, due to uncontrolled hunting and demand for its horns in Chinese medicine. At one point, some conservation groups, such as the World Wildlife Fund, encouraged the hunting of this species as its horn was presented as an alternative to that of a rhinoceros.
Today the populations have again shrunk enormously, as much as 95% in 15 years, and the saiga is classified as critically endangered by the IUCN. There is an estimated total number of 50,000 Saigas today, which live in Kalmykia, three areas of Kazakhstan and in two isolated areas of Mongolia. Another small population in the Pre-Caspian region of Russia, remains under extreme threat.
Cherny Zemli Nature Reserve was created in Russia's Kalmykia Republic in 1990s to protect the local saiga population and the President of Russia's Kalmykia Republic, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, announced year of 2010 in Kalmykia as Year of Saiga. In Kazakhstan, the number of saiga was recently found to be increasing, from around 21,000 at the begin of this millennium to around 81,000 in January 2010.
However, in May 2010, it was announced that an estimated 12,000 of the 26,000 Saiga population in the Ural region of Kazakhstan have been found dead. Although the deaths are currently being ascribed to pasteurellosis, an infectious disease that strikes the lungs and intestines, the underlying trigger remains to be identified.
Kazakhstan in November 2010 reaffirmed a ban on hunting saiga antelopes, and extended this ban until 2021, as the Central Asian nation seeks to save the endangered species.
Currently only the Moscow Zoo zoo keeps saigas. Cologne and San Diego Zoos had them in the past. Pleistocene Park in northern Siberia plans to introduce the species.
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Category:True antelopes Category:Fauna of Kazakhstan Category:EDGE Species Category:Megafauna of Eurasia Category:Monotypic mammal genera Category:Animals described in 1766
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