Saiga antelopes experience devastating mass mortality events affecting hundreds of thousands of animals, driven by climate-triggered bacterial infections.
Mass die-off events represent catastrophic welfare events in which hundreds of thousands of individual animals suffer acute hemorrhagic septicemia and death over days. Calves born during die-off periods die alongside their mothers, and surviving animals experience the loss of their entire social group in a species where calving aggregations form essential social structure. While the species has demonstrated remarkable population recovery capacity, the suffering experienced during each mass mortality event is immense. Climate change increasing trigger event frequency represents the most serious long-term welfare threat.