Saiga antelope calving aggregations create concentrated welfare vulnerabilities requiring targeted protection from disturbance and disease during this critical reproductive period.
Saiga calving aggregations represent a period of concentrated vulnerability where individual welfare risks scale with population. Neonatal calves are mobile enough to be abandoned but not mobile enough to escape predation — their welfare depends critically on maternal presence and freedom from disturbance. Human intrusion causing stampede events creates welfare harms that cascade: separated calves die of exposure and predation, while stressed mothers may not successfully relocate their young in the aftermath. Protection of calving aggregation sites is thus both a conservation imperative and a welfare necessity — the welfare of thousands of individual calves depends on human restraint during this brief but critical period.