Saiga antelopes are highly mobile steppe animals that require vast connected grasslands for their remarkable seasonal migrations, and habitat fragmentation threatens both migration viability and population welfare.
Saiga welfare is fundamentally tied to the integrity of their migration routes. Barriers including fences and infrastructure that interrupt migration force saigas into dangerous crossings or prevent access to seasonal range entirely. Animals blocked from reaching winter range in extreme cold suffer hypothermia and starvation. Barriers that concentrate migrating saiga in narrow crossing points create density-dependent disease spread opportunities. Road and railway crossings cause vehicle strikes during migration movements. In addition to the catastrophic mass mortality events from bacterial infection, saigas face chronic welfare stresses from habitat degradation, water source contamination from mining and industry, and poaching for horns and meat. The remarkable social behaviour of saiga — forming enormous aggregations during migration and calving — means that population-level welfare events affect hundreds of thousands of individuals simultaneously.