Saiga antelopes have experienced catastrophic population collapses including one of the most dramatic mass die-offs in recorded wildlife history. Their welfare and survival hang in the balance.
Wild saiga welfare encompasses both the catastrophic acute suffering of mass die-off events and chronic threats from habitat loss, hunting, and climate change. The 2015 mass die-off caused suffering on an almost incomprehensible scale — hundreds of thousands of animals dying from hemorrhagic septicemia within days. Climate warming is implicated in making Pasteurella multocida virulent under conditions that were historically benign, suggesting future mass die-offs are possible. Illegal hunting for saiga horns disproportionately removes adult males, leaving populations with severely skewed sex ratios that impair reproduction. Vehicle collisions during migration and infrastructure blocking of traditional migration routes cause additional mortality with welfare costs. Recovery programs in Kazakhstan have shown that with protection, saiga populations can recover rapidly — from 50,000 to over 1.3 million between 2003 and 2019.