Experts are scrambling to understand how almost 120,000 saiga antelopes have died off in Central Asia at an unprecedented rate, harming recent efforts to protect the endangered species.

The mass die-off began in mid-May in Kazakhstan, where most saiga populations are concentrated.

“You’ve got the beautiful green pastures littered with white mounds of saiga carcasses, and when you look more closely, (there are) little freshly-born calves . . . and they’re all dead,” said Aline Kühl-Stenzel, the terrestrial species coordinator at the United Nations Environment Program and Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals Secretariat (NEP/CMS).

While experts have not found the exact cause off the sudden deaths, Kühl-Stenzel told the Star that a combination of environmental and biological factors, including some that are specific to saiga, could be responsible.

Heavy rainfall in the area could explain a change in local vegetation, and the presence of two bacteria in the animals (Pasteurella and Clostridia), though not the cause, may have also contributed to the speed with which they are dying.

“(The bacteria) are not the fundamental cause of the die-off . . . There has got to be something else that is weakening and stressing the immune systems of these animals, and it’s got to be very serious because we’re seeing 100 per cent mortality,” Kühl-Stenzel said.

She said more than 500 people have been deployed to Kazakhstan to take samples, conduct autopsies on the animals, and bury the carcasses to minimize the risk of further deaths.

The teams will carry out tests over the next several weeks in order to find the cause.

“This loss is a huge blow for saiga conservation in Kazakhstan and in the world . . . It is very painful to witness this mass mortality,” Erlan Nysynbaev, vice-minister of Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Agriculture, said.

Four large herds have been completed eradicated, and most of the dead animals were female saiga that had recently given birth, Kühl-Stenzel added.

“The thing that’s most puzzling and most concerning is that we’ve lost four very large herds and we’ve seen 100 per cent mortality. So every single animal is dead, none got out alive,” she said.

Saiga antelopes are one of the world’s most ancient mammals, dating back to the Ice Age. They have a distinctive hump-nose that hangs over their mouths, and short horns.

The species suffered a devastating decline in the 1990s following the fall of the Soviet Union, when unchecked poaching led its population numbers to drop from more than 1 million to about 50,000.

In 2002, Saiga antelopes were listed as Critically Endangered.

Today, the animals are primarily concentrated in Kazakhstan, while one saiga type also lives in Russia, and some herds reach Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan during migration.

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An aerial survey carried out earlier this year showed that the Betpak-dala type of saiga numbered approximately 250,000, meaning that almost half of the population has been killed in the recent die-off.

Kühl-Stenzel said that while the species has the capacity to rebound more robustly than other animals – given its naturally-high birth rate – the fact that most of the dead are females will hurt the species’ ability to recover.

“Central Asia is one of the last places where you have vast grasslands where these animals can roam freely in large numbers,” she added. “The whole ecosystem depends on this migration. It would be so awful if we lost it.”

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