FRANCE: What do you do when half a species dies practically all at once?That was the question that faced delegates from Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Mongolia and China when they met last week to discuss the sudden die-off earlier this year of tens of thousands of critically endangered saiga, a small antelope native to central Asia.
Over the course of just two weeks during the animals’ summer calving season, more than half of the world’s population of the knobby-legged ungulates with outsized snouts were found dead in the Uzbeki steppe lands, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society.
Experts don’t know what killed 60,000 or so male, female and newborn saiga in one fell swoop. It could have been some combination of disease coupled with changes in weather or vegetation. Whatever the cause, the massive number of deaths appears to be unprecedented.
“Significant disease-related die-offs are not new events for the saiga,” said Dr. Denise McAloose, head of pathology for the WCS Health Program. “Much smaller but serious die-offs have occurred over the past few decades. What is surprising and of great concern in this case is the size and extent of the event — entire herds suffered near-100 percent mortality.”
It’s a sad and scary state of affairs for an animal that was only recently seeing great rebounds in numbers.
