Saiga antelopes suffered catastrophic mass die-offs from disease and face hunting pressure, but conservation efforts have driven remarkable population recovery from near-extinction.
The 2015 mass mortality event represents one of the most devastating welfare events in modern wildlife history. Individual saigas died from hemorrhagic septicemia over days - a painful bacterial infection causing internal bleeding, respiratory failure, and death across an entire herd simultaneously. Witnessing this scale of suffering within a single species in days was unprecedented. Anti-poaching interventions have demonstrated remarkable recovery capacity, but each hunted individual suffers the welfare costs of illegal killing methods including snares and illegal firearms. The conservation success story shows what sustained intervention can achieve.