TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND MODERN TECHNOLOGY
FOR THE SUSTAINABLE MANAGEMENT OF DRYLAND ECOSYSTEMS //
Proceedings of the International Workshop,
Elista, Republic of Kalmykia, Russian Federation,
23–27 June 2004.
UNESCO–MAB Drylands Series, No. 4,
p.163-166
The saiga antelope in the drylands of Russia and how
to ensure its sustainable future
Yury Arylov,The Centre for Wild Animals of the Republic of
Kalmykia, Kalmykia, Russia;
Anna Lushchekina and Valery Neronov, Russian MAB Committee, Moscow
During the Quaternary, when most of the Northern Hemisphere was covered by
tundra-steppe, immense herds of saiga antelope, together with woolly mammoths,
used the available plant resources of a far more extensive territory than the
saiga’s present range. Fossil bones, not so different from the modern species,
have been found in deposits scattered from the British Isles all the way to
Alaska, and from the northwest territories of Canada to the New Siberian Islands
to the north and the Pre-Caucasus region to the south.Two subspecies of the
saiga are currently recognized: Saiga tatarica mongolica, which inhabits
the small steppe area in Mongolia, and Saiga tatarica tatarica, which
occupies the vast plains of Central Asia and the Pre-Caspian region. Their massive
seasonal migrations have been described, particularly those of Saiga tatarica
tatarica.
The nominative subspecies of saiga antelope is a unique form of nomadic ungulate
that once regularly migrated over hundreds of kilometres of grassland habitat.
In the course of its evolution this subspecies became very well adapted to the
harsh and unpredictable conditions of an extreme environment. Despite its rather
sheep-like body, the saiga antelope is one of the fastest terrestrial vertebrates,
capable of reaching speeds of up to 80 km per hour. The saiga’s most notable
external feature is the presence of a curved, trunk-like nose, which apparently
evolved for air filtering and thermoregulation during hot, dusty summers and
ice-cold winters. Individual saigas have a short life span, and the adults have
high reproductive rates, with adaptations that allow for rapid demographic recovery
following particularly severe climatic episodes. The males are crowned with
a pair of waxy, light yellow horns, which they use as effective weapons. Unfortunately,
however, these horns are a valued commodity in the Chinese traditional medicine
market; records of exports that passed through the customs office of Kjakhta
(Transbaikalia) indicate that 3.95 million horns were exported to China during
the 1800s alone.
By the 1920s, over-harvesting had almost completely eliminated the saiga from
most of their range. Intensive hunting and the development of steppe lands in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries reduced global saiga populations
to only a few hundred. For seventy years, the Soviet Union’s closed borders
supported the antelope population by cutting off international trade routes.
Saiga hunting was banned from 1919 until the 1950s, allowing numbers to recover
to nearly 2 million, and bringing the antelope from a position of near extinction
to the most numerous ungulate in the Soviet Union.This amazing recovery was
in part due to the animal’s high fecundity: saiga females begin breeding in
the first year of life and give birth to their first calf in the second year.
Older females are capable of producing two and even three calves per year.
Three populations of S. t. tatarica are known in Central Asia: the Ural,
the Ust’-Urt and the Betpakdala populations, in addition to one European population
in the Pre-Caspian region. It is possible that some herds from Ust’-Urt in Kazakhstan
also migrate to adjacent territories of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Saiga herds
of the European population may migrate from Kalmykia to Daghestan and other
adjacent territories in Russia. In the particularly harsh winter of 1998–9,
a herd of 80,000 migrated into Daghestan in search of food. A few weeks later,
only a few small groups returned. Witnesses in Daghestan reported that the snow
was red with blood from the slaughter of saiga by poachers.
Between 1980 and 1994, total saiga numbers fluctuated between 670,000 and 1,251,000
individuals. In the same period,single population estimates were as follows:
European population, 142,000 to 430,000; Ural population, 40,000 to 298,000;Ust’-Urt
population,140,000 to 265,000;and Betpakdala population,250,000 to 510,000 individuals.All
four S. t. tatarica populations experienced severe population declines after
1998.The annual rate of population decline during 1998–9 was roughly 35 per
cent, reaching a dramatic 56 per cent drop during 1999–2000. The 2004 census
revealed the numbers as 15,000 European, 15,000 Ust’Urt, 8,800 Ural and 6,900
Betpakdala saiga (A. Bekenov, personal communication).
Saiga aggregations vary in size throughout the year. Larger herds are recorded
during the reproductive season, but can also be observed in other periods of
the year. During the winter, large herds are better able to break through the
superficial layer of snow and reach the forage they need. During the summer,
large herds may offer individuals temporary relief from massive attacks by blood-sucking
insects. Most importantly, large herds offer better protection and early warning
against predators, particularly the wolves that are common in many regions of
the Eurasian steppes.
Since the early 1980s, saiga populations have suffered from illegal poaching
and trade, and from habitat degradation and other forms of environmental disturbance.
The demographic effects of periodic summer droughts, occasional severe winters,
the spread of some diseases and pressure of predators have been magnified by
largescale hunting with dramatic results for the majority of herds. Hunting,
and particularly poaching, are connected with a demand for saiga horns for the
Chinese traditional medicine market. Such trade through ‘open’ frontiers was
a source of hard currency for a number of people involved in this illegal business.
More recently in Russia, against the background of a drastic decline in livestock
farming, saigas have been targeted for meat consumption, and this has added
to the overall pressure on wild populations.
Now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the saiga’s range within
the northwest Pre-Caspian region has shrunk considerably. Not so long ago many
thousands of herds of this unique animal moved freely across grassland habitats
in the territory of the Republic of Kalmykia and the Astrakhan oblast, and they
could sometimes be found in the Rostov and Volgograd oblasts. In the cold and
persistent snowy winters of the mid-1980s, they were seen within 10 or 15 km
of Astrakhan city.Today it is very rare to see saiga even in the remotest parts
of the steppe, and thus there is a general lack of information about their migrations.The
reasons for the decline are numerous, but the development of agriculture, particularly
the construction of irrigation channels, had a major impact on saiga numbers
and nomadic behaviour.
On the eve of the Great October Revolution, sheep comprised about two-thirds
of the entire livestock population in the northwest Pre-Caspian region, followed
by cattle (c. 20 per cent) and horses (c. 13 per cent). During the 1920s, the
proportion of sheep grew to 74 per cent, while those of cattle and horses dropped
to 16 per cent and 7.5 per cent respectively.The collectivization drive of the
1930s furthered this tendency a little, by pushing sheep numbers up, and horses
down, a few per cent more. But it was during the 1960s that Kalmykia was subjected
to the most dramatic changes in the structure of its livestock population since
the advent of Soviet power: in just one decade, the proportion of sheep reached
85 per cent or more, while the horses sank below 1 per cent.
The unprecedented explosion of sheep in the area (a rise in the 1960s to 2
million head, over twice the population in the 1950s) soon led to forage deficits,
which provoked haphazard attempts to ‘improve’ natural pastures by turning them
into fields to cultivate more fodder. During the 1960s, Kalmykia saw over 150,000
hectares of its pastureland ploughed up in pursuit of this goal; by the early
1970s, every bit of this land had been destroyed by wind erosion, to the point
of having no vegetation whatsoever. Of course, this resulted in the fragmentation
of the saiga range, competition for forage with livestock and the isolation
of some sub-populations.
For example, Sarpa Depression with its many lakes was a preferred site for
the saiga, especially in the spring when lush ephemeral plants would grow, and
was where female saiga preferred to give birth. In the early 1960s the construction
of the Sarpa Irrigation Facilities largely cut them off from the area. In 1981–2,
the Sarpinskaya and Chernozemelskaya irrigation systems were brought into operation.The
total length of the systems is about 500 km and the area of irrigated lands
amounts to about 62,000 hectares. As a result the saiga range decreased to 20,000–23,000
km. and the number of animals counted at that time was about 160,000–200,000
(in 1977–8 there had been 600,000–700,000).
The boom in economic reconstruction in the region was growing at a frenetic
pace. In the late 1970s, the Sarpa Depression saw the launch of a new irrigation
project, the Kalmyk–Astrakhan Facilities, intended to transform the area into
a rice-growing region. While this huge development was rapidly devouring what
was left of the saiga’s favourite spring pastures, the remaining steppe tracts
in the western parts of Kalmykia and adjacent provinces were turned into a uniform
mass of ploughed fields, interrupted only by newly-built canals and roads. As
a result, the usual summer retreats of the saiga in areas such as the Ergeni
Heights and the Kuma-Manych Interfluve were practically eliminated.
Construction of the Volga–Chograi Canal, 80 km of which was 20 m deep, began
in the second half of the 1980s, and also brought changes in patterns of migration
routes and in saiga numbers. The impact of this huge canal, if it had been completed,
would have further decreased the range and numbers of saiga. Fortunately, the
construction of the canal was stopped and only the very steep slopes of the
80-km canal portion remind us of this pointless project.
The development of irrigated agriculture in these regions, coupled with the
building of artificial waterways and reservoirs to ‘improve’ the quality of
natural pastures in the drier central and southern parts of Kalmykia, affected
the saiga population in a number of ways. Apart from depriving them of important
habitats, irrigation facilities created additional sources of drinking water
and the saiga became less likely to migrate; since they remained in the same
vicinity in large numbers, the nearby pastures were increasingly overgrazed.
Furthermore, an expanding network of water distribution channels (which eventually
reached a total of over 1,300 km) vastly impaired their seasonal migrations.
Built without heed to the animal’s existence, irrigation trenches are known
to have caused heavy casualties among the saiga, mostly among the newborns accompanying
their mothers en route from the birth sites. In May 1977 for example, over 14,000
saiga, most of them calves only three to ten days old,were found dead along
a 5-km stretch of an irrigation trench in central Kalmykia, having failed to
make it through the water that was being pumped into its bed as they tried to
cross it.
As the irrigation network grew more and more dense, so too did the network
of transportation routes. In 1960, the total length of paved roads in Kalmykia
had been a mere 100 km; by 1986, it was 1,604 km. Like canals, the roads increasingly
hampered the animal’s migrations and became a major cause of their decline.
The Volga River had not previously been a barrier to migrating herds, which
had crossed this very large river when it was frozen.Following the construction
of many dams, however, and changes in the water regime, the lower stream of
the river no longer freezes even during severe winters.
Our observations and interviews with local people and the staff of various
conservation organizations revealed the radical changes in the migrations of
the saiga population in the territory of the northwest Pre- Caspian region (the
left and right banks of the Volga river). During 2002, two herds (600 and 1,000
animals) were observed migrating from Kazakhstan to the Astrakhan oblast. These
two herds spent two to three days in Russian territory and later returned to
Kazakhstan. Several small groups (five to ten animals) of saigas at the south
part of the Astrakhan oblast were also observed.
In the northwest Pre-Caspian region, saiga concentrate at more or less safe
zones: Chernyje Zemli Biosphere Reserve (Kalmykia) and the ‘Stepnoi’ Reserve
(Astrakhan oblast). Minor movements, which can hardly be termed real migrations,
have a circular character. Poaching and wild fires could very often trigger
such nomadic roaming from place to place. In August 2002, for the first time
in ten years, several herds (totalling more than 5,000 animals) migrated over
long distances (about 150 km) from the southeast to the north. These herds returned
in October 2002 but unfortunately, due to poaching, they lost a considerable
number of adult males. According to data from the Department of Hunting Management,
no more that 0.4 per cent of adult males survived in the European population
of saiga that autumn.
In 1995 heightened international awareness of the plight of the saiga led to
its listing in Appendix II of the CITES Treaty, and it was also listed in Appendix
II of the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) during the Seventh Conference
of the Parties in 2002, in accordance with a proposal submitted by Uzbekistan.
In 2002, the Species Survival Commission of the IUCN listed the saiga as a critically
endangered species in its Red List of Threatened Animals.
Conservation measures are very necessary at this time and must include special
protected areas for lambing and rutting dispersed throughout the entire range
where the saiga migrate. Special attention should also be given to protecting
the most suitable places along migration routes.Protecting the saiga habitat
has been an important step in conserving Kalmykia’s saiga population. In 1990,
more than 90,000 ha in eastern Kalmykia were included in the Chernyje Zemli
Biosphere Reserve. Three other sanctuaries with lower levels of protection were
also established, restricting land use and access by motorized vehicles.These
areas provide the saiga with refuge during the calving period in May, when more
than 70 per cent of the European population gathers in the protected areas to
give birth, and here they are relatively safe from poachers.Yet Kalmykia’s existing
protected areas cannot ensure that the saiga are safe, and they need to be improved.The
problem is not only that they cover too small a portion of the animal’s range
but that they are also fixed in space, while the animals are not. Ideally, thirty
times more land should be protected to safeguard the saiga’s main migration
routes. Highways and railroads, canals, fences, pipelines and poachers create
obstacles to saiga movements, and it is absolutely necessary to establish ecological
corridors between protected areas. In some cases it will be necessary to restore
the previous capacity of pastures within the saiga range. Given that poaching
for domestic consumption is now a major threat, anti-poaching measures should
be strengthened, together with those aimed at curbing the international trade
in saiga horns. Captive breeding must also be considered seriously among the
many conservation actions that need to be taken to ensure the long-term survival
of the saiga antelope.
To save the species, special protection should now be organized, including
areas for lambing and rutting and migration routes between winter and summer
grounds. Some surveys to justify the optimal scheme of saiga conservation in
the Pre-Caspian region have been conducted and relevant recommendations have
been passed to decision makers.Yashkul district administration special saiga
breeding centre was established with support from the government of the Republic
of Kalmykia. The centre now has a reasonable stock of saigas and there are preparations
to release adult males into the wild.
At one time, pastures within the Chernyje Zemli ecoregion in the Republic of
Kalmykia were used by large herds of livestock and of saiga. As a result of
inappropriate management in the latter half of the twentieth century, these
pastures have been degraded and many foci of desertification appeared in this
area. It is believed that the degradation of pastures has been caused by a large
number of Merino sheep which have morphological and behavioural features unsuitable
for grazing on poor dryland sand pastures all year around. Many traditional
breeds of livestock reared in the territory of the Republic of Kalmykia before
the Second World War disappeared during the mass deportation of Kalmyks to Siberia
in 1943.As mentioned above, after ‘Perestroika’, when the number of livestock
in pastures declined drastically, the local people turned their attention to
wildlife and the resultant poaching reduced the number of saigas to a critical
level.
Currently there are also attempts, supported by the Government of the Republic
of Kalmykia, to restore traditional animal husbandry and some of the mutton–
wool fat-tail sheep originally raised by the Kalmyks have been imported from
Mongolia and China for this purpose. As previously mentioned, sheep and saigas
shared the same pastures within the Chernyje Zemli ecoregion, and according
to the available literature there was no competition between them. In order
to preserve the saiga’s gene pool,the government of the Republic of Kalmykia
has given the Centre for Wild Animals of Kalmykia (one of the active partners
for implementing the Darwin Initiative project) 800 hectares of land in Yashkul
district (near Ermeli settlement) with good natural pastures for the construction
of enclosures to start a programme of breeding saiga in captivity. The Ermeli
breeding centre now has a good number of saigas of different ages, several enclosures
have been fenced, a laboratory has been build and a permanent water and energy
supply (including power from renewable resources) has been installed. A lot
more land belonging to this centre is available for grazing and haymaking. Nearby
there are some villages promoting traditional husbandry and sustainable exploitation
of the saiga. Ideally, a model farm could be established that would produce
(using traditional technologies) milk products, wool, meat and also handicrafts
as an additional income for rural people within the saiga range.
Numerous ecotourists and groups of students/ schoolchildren visiting the centre
would be good customers for such products. In cooperation with the centre, and
using its enclosures, it will be possible to conduct experiments on the rational
use of pasture capacity by livestock and saigas to prevent in future the desertification
that occurred previously.To create the model farm it will be necessary to purchase
some pure-bred fat-tail sheep and Kalmyk cattle breeds, as well as equipment
for producing cheese, brynza and other milk products, and handicraft equipment
for making souvenirs from local materials.The success of the farm should encourage
rural people in neighbouring areas and provide know-how to apply in their own
lives in order to improve their living standards. Such combined experience of
saiga breeding and traditional sheep and cattle husbandry with intensive use
of fenced pastures should help both to promote saiga conservation and to provide
people with additional income.
The following goals should be set:
Promote optimal range management with use of wild animals and traditional
breeds of domestic animals that are well adapted to local conditions.
Evaluate the capacity of different pastures under different loads of saiga
and livestock.The data can be used for other areas in similar condition to
prevent the risk of desertification.
Conserve the cultural heritage of the Kalmyk peoples and promote ecological
education through use of traditional handicrafts for producing souvenirs,
skills which are practically non-existent today.
Help to solve the problems of unemployment and improve living standards
in rural areas of the Chernyje Zemli ecoregion as the main habitat of saiga.
Acknowledgements
We would like to express our gratitude for the generous help we received in
conducting surveys on the saiga, its conservation measures and public awareness
activities in the territory of the Republic of Kalmykia from organizations such
as RBRF (03-04-48457), DBS RAS, the Darwin Initiative ‘Using saiga antelope
conservation to improve rural livelihoods’, INTAS (03-51-3579), PTES, LHF, Denver
Zoological Society, Chicago Zoological Society, and IGF.
