Saiga antelopes survived the Pleistocene extinctions but face catastrophic modern threats. Poaching, disease, and climate change have caused dramatic population crashes.
The 2015 mass mortality event caused enormous acute suffering across hundreds of thousands of individual animals who died from severe internal bleeding within days of infection. The event demonstrated how even a recovered population can be devastated by a single pathogen outbreak amplified by climate conditions. Individual saiga that survived the outbreak but lost calves, herd members, and social partners experienced social disruption with potential welfare consequences. Poaching for horn kills males almost exclusively, skewing sex ratios so severely in some populations that reproduction collapses. Saiga caught in snares set for other animals suffer painful injuries. Range-wide population monitoring, anti-poaching patrol networks, and community engagement programmes to reduce traditional medicine demand represent the priority welfare and conservation interventions.