Saiga
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| Saiga Conservation status: Critical | ||||||||||||||
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| Saiga tatarica (Linnaeus, 1766) |
The saiga, or Saiga tatarica, is a kind of gazelle that lives in central Asia. Until recently, they were common, with over 1.2 million of them in Russia and Kazakhstan. However, in less than ten years (1993 to 2001), 97.5% of this population has been wiped out, and only 30,000 remain.
Essentially all of the remaining saiga are female, and so there is no real chance of the species recovering on its own. Biologists say it is the most sudden and dramatic extinction of a large mammal ever seen.
In the age of industrial hunting, these gentle herbivores don't have a chance. Hunters use motorcycles and high-powered weapons to chase and kill them. The horns are shipped to China, where they sell for $45/pound ($100 per kilogram) and Chinese people grind them up to make medicines for fighting fevers.
Ironically, the saiga landed in the crosshairs chiefly because of the active efforts of the conservation groups including the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
In the late 1980s, in a misguided effort to protect rhinos from the demands of Chinese markets, the WWF figured it might be a good idea to divert demand to another animal. So they commissioned a study at the Chinese University of Hong Kong that certified saiga horn to be as effective as rhino horn in fighting fevers, and in 1991 the organization began a campaign to publicize saiga as an alternative to rhino.
The United Nations contributed, hiring a WWF ecologist named Esmond Bradley Martin as its "special envoy" to persuade pharmacists across Asia to adopt saiga horn.
The U.N. and the WWF did a great job. By 1993, markets in Hong Kong were piled high with saiga horn.
According to one conservationist quoted by New Scientist in 2003, "We think we have probably got just two years to save the species. The trouble is, most people have never heard of the animal, so it is hard to raise funds."
In the words of U.N. saiga hunting promoter Bradley Martin, "I supported the use of saiga antelope horn as a substitute for rhino horn from the early 1980s. In my opinion it was the correct policy at the time. But I stopped around 1995, when I read about the start of the sharp decline in saiga populations."