The deadly virus has never been seen in wild antelope before SERGEI KHOMENKO/New York Times / Redux / eyevine

Save the saiga. Hundreds of Mongolia’s iconic antelopes have died after contracting a deadly virus that normally affects sheep and goats.

Saiga antelopes (Saiga tatarica) were once widespread across the grasslands of Europe and Asia. But hunting and disease have reduced their numbers from 1.25 million to 50,000 over the last four decades.


Now, a further 900 saiga – almost 10 per cent of the endangered Mongolian subspecies (Saiga tatarica mongolica) – have perished in the country’s Khovd province, and thousands more are at risk.

The carcasses tested positive for Peste des Petits Ruminants (PPR), a highly contagious virus that usually affects sheep and goats, also known as goat plague. Symptoms of the disease, which kills up to 90 per cent of infected animals, are severe diarrhoea, fever, pneumonia and mouth sores.

First reported in Côte d’Ivoire in 1942, PPR has since spread between domestic sheep and goats across Africa, the Middle East and Asia. But outbreaks in wild animals are rare, and have never before been seen in free-ranging antelopes.

Mongolia had its first ever outbreak of PPR in sheep and goats in September 2016 after the virus spread from China. It may then have crossed to saiga during close contact at shared grazing grounds, says the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO).

Further tests are being carried out to confirm that PPR is responsible for the deaths. Other possible causes need to be ruled out, including the Pasteurella multocida bacteria that wiped out 200,000 saiga antelopes in Kazakhstan in 2015.

“If PPR is confirmed to be the main cause, the saiga death toll is likely to reach into the thousands in the next three months,” says Bouna Diop at FAO.

The worst-case scenario would be if the disease spreads among different saiga herds throughout the winter. Seasonal migration and mixing of the antelopes could then mean an upsurge in fatalities in the spring.

There is no effective treatment for the disease in saiga. “The best strategy is to vaccinate domestic sheep and goats and prevent further spill over to saiga,” says Diop.

FAO and the World Organisation for Animal Health launched a PPR eradication programme in 2016, which aims to wipe out the disease worldwide by 2030 using measures such as vaccination, movement control and quarantine.

The virus does not affect humans.

Read more: Mystery disease claims half world population of saiga antelopes