Saiga Antelope - Distribution

Distribution

During the Ice Age, the saiga ranged from the British Isles through Central Asia and the Bering Strait into Alaska and the Yukon. By the classical age they were apparently considered a characteristic animal of Scythia, judging from the historian Strabo's description of an animal called the "Kolos" that was "between the deer and ram in size" and was (understandably but wrongly) believed to drink through its nose. At the beginning of the 18th century, it was still distributed from the shores of the Black Sea, the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, and the northern edge of the Caucasus into Dzungaria and Mongolia.

After a rapid decline they were nearly completely exterminated in the 1920s, but they were able to recover. By 1950, two million of them were found in the steppes of the USSR. Their population fell drastically following the collapse of the USSR due to uncontrolled hunting and demand for 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. An estimated total number of 50,000 saigas survive today 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 the 1990s to protect the local saiga population. Kalmykia's president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov announced 2010 as the Year of Saiga in Kalmykia. 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, 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.

The Mongolian saiga (S. t. mongolica) is found in a small area in western Mongolia around the Sharga and Mankhan Nature Reserves.

Currently, only the Moscow Zoo and Askania-Nova keep saigas. Cologne Zoological Garden and San Diego Zoo had them in the past. Pleistocene Park in northern Siberia plans to introduce the species.