Boost for Central Asian Saiga Antelope Conservation

The 8th meeting of the conference of the Parties to the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS), which concluded yesterday, has approved a Memorandum of Understanding for the conservation and management of the Saiga antelope (Saiga tatarica tatarica). The agreement and action plan were ratified by Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan and formally signed byTurkmenistan’s Minister of Nature Protection, as well as by the Mongolian Minister of Environment, IUCN, the CMS Secretariat and WWF. Saiga antelope is now recognized as endangered by the IUCN (World Conservation Union). The MOU covers the Central Asian populations in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Russia. Saiga, which numbered over one million, as recently as the early 1990s, has now been reduced to around 40,000.