Over 120,000 saiga antelope have been confirmed dead in Central Kazakhstan. This is over one third of the total world population of saiga antelope.
What is exactly causing this disaster is unclear:
CMS Executive Secretary, Bradnee Chambers said “Authorities in Kazakhstan are responding quickly to this disaster and are working hard to solve the mystery behind this mass saiga die-off. I am pleased that the international expert mission we were able to send, at very short notice, is now contributing to these efforts".
According to information received from the members of the CMS expert mission, it is becoming clear that two secondary opportunistic pathogens, specifically Pasteurella and Clostridia, are contributing to the rapid and wide-spread die-off. However, the hunt for the fundamental drivers of the mass mortality continues since these bacteria are only lethal to an animal if its immune system is already weakened.
Scientists are leaning towards the above two pathogens since they are already in the body and could account for the rapidity of the saiga population's deaths in a way that an outside virus probably would not. The saiga antelope is no stranger to being endangered.
Mass mortality events are not unusual for saiga antelopes, with a case occurring as recently as 2010 with 12,000 dead animals. However, the scale of the current event is unprecedented relative to the total population size. Often these mass mortality events occur in the birth period, when saiga females come together in vast herds to all give birth within a peak period of less than one week.