This article will explore the plight of the Saiga Antelope, a species native to Central Asia that is currently endangered. We will look at the causes of their decline, the efforts being made to protect them, and the potential consequences of their extinction. We will
The saiga antelope or saiga is a species of antelope which during antiquity inhabited a vast area of the Eurasian steppe, spanning the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains in the northwest and Caucasus in the southwest into Mongolia in the northeast and Dzungaria in the southeast. During the Pleistocene, it ranged across the mammoth steppe from the British Isles to Beringia. Today, the dominant subspecies only occurs in Kalmykia and Astrakhan Oblast of Russia and in the Ural Mountains, Ustyurt Plateau and Betpak-Dala regions of Kazakhstan. A portion of the Ustyurt population migrates south to Uzbekistan and occasionally to Turkmenistan in winter. It is regionally extinct in Romania, Ukraine, Moldova, China and southwestern Mongolia. The Mongolian subspecies occurs only in western Mongolia.