Saiga antelope face catastrophic population crashes from disease and poaching, with welfare programs addressing individual animal care during mass mortality events.
Saiga welfare illustrates the intersection of epidemic disease, poaching, and climate stress at population scale. During mass mortality events, thousands of individuals experience acute suffering — neurological impairment, hemorrhaging, and death over hours to days — while conservationists watch helplessly, unable to intervene at scale. Veterinary response teams have developed protocols to provide what care is possible and gather disease data to inform future prevention, but individual welfare during catastrophic events remains largely unaddressable. The poaching crisis that drove saiga near extinction in the 1990s targeted males exclusively, leaving female-dominated populations whose reproductive recovery depends on finding scarce mates.