There are several different species of antelope and gazelle in the parts of Mongolia we visited. Of these, the Saiga antelope was top of our list, for three reasons. First, this antelope has grazed the steppes since the last Ice Age, alongside the Woolly Mammoth and the Siberian Tiger. Second, it is a bizarre-looking creature, with the older ones developing an extraordinary proboscis-like nose. Third, it almost disappeared from the steppes of Central Asia in the early 2000’s, being classified as Critically Endangered. It has since recovered remarkably, and is now classified as Near Threatened.
The rugged mountains where the snow leopards live are separated by wide valleys of steppe grasslands. This is Saiga territory. They are skittish, so we never got very close, but we saw a herd of around 30 animals sharing the vast flats with sheep and goats (right in background):
and cattle:
They hold their heads low, even when running:
They have Roman noses and a lugubrious face:
Another day we saw a single doe:
walking all alone and solitary across the plains :
What we didn’t see, sadly, was a mature male with a fully developed proboscis, so here is a photo from National Geographic:
The reasons for the saiga’s precipitous decline were many. After the Soviet Union broke up illegal hunting increased dramatically, driven mainly by demand from China for the horns for traditional medicine. The Pasteurella multocida bacterium caused mass deaths in 2015, and the Peste des Petits Ruminants Virus (PPRV) spread from livestock in 2017 and killed nearly 80%. It gets worse. A 2021 study showed that Foot-and-Mouth Disease has also spread into the saiga herds, with a mortality rate of 34%.
The rebound in population is extremely encouraging, but they are not out of danger yet.
PS We also saw Goitred Gazelle in the Altai, and Mongolian Gazelle in the west of the country, but too far away to photograph usefully. Here are some Mongolian Gazelle, grazing alongside a herd of horses:
They’re not endangered at all, I am delighted to say, despite being hunted for centuries: “a passage in the 13th-century Secret History of the Mongols tells how a young Shigi Qutuqu managed to round up a herd of gazelles in a winter blizzard.” (Wikipedia)
Eyes on the Wild 