The saiga antelope has survived since the Pleistocene but faces catastrophic new threats from climate-linked mass mortality events and ongoing poaching pressure.
Saiga welfare disasters are occurring at a scale that defies individual-centered welfare frameworks. Mass mortality events kill hundreds of thousands of animals within weeks through systemic bacterial infection that causes hemorrhagic septicemia — a rapid, painful progression from apparent health to collapse and death. The 2015 event was particularly devastating because calving females and their newborns were disproportionately affected. Climate change is directly increasing the frequency and scale of these events by creating the warm, humid conditions that allow Pasteurella bacteria to become virulent. Individual saiga also suffer from horn poaching (males are killed for traditional medicine), entanglement in fencing, and vehicle mortality on migration routes.