“I really wanted my school to have a ‘Friends of saiga’ club”. Recalls Bekaly Omirzak, a 14 year old boy from the remote village of Koskol in Kazakhstan.
Last year the Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity of Kazakhstan (ACBK), the Saiga Conservation Alliance partner in Kazakhstan, visited Kaskol, the small village where Bekaly lives with his family. During a meeting the ACBK spoke to the villagers about a programme to reintroduce Kulan to their region. Our colleagues also told them about how we are fighting to save saigas too.
After the meeting the team remembers the young boy approaching them with hundreds of questions about saigas, wanting to know more about how we study them and how he could get involved. Bekaly introduced us to his grandfather, who shared his memories about seeing thousands of saigas filling the steppe all around the village. He recalled that the calving sites used to be much closer to their village, and some saigas left their calves on the nearby steppe and walked away to graze and drink.
Even in those days his grandfather remembers always being against hunting saigas. He didn’t see the point in killing the beautiful steppe antelope, when each Kazakh family bred its own sheep, cows, horses and even camels.
Bekaly loved his grandfather’s stories about saigas, and was sad to not witness the same. Even with the protection of the government, poachers were finding ways to kill this unique and sacred animal. Illegal shooting of saigas had a huge impact on Bekaly, but he felt he couldn’t do anything because of his young age. Nevertheless, he wanted to do something, and asked us to open a ‘Friends of saiga’ club in his school, to spread the word among other children and to help protect the species.
On December 25 2018, thanks to the combined will of Bekaly and support from the Saiga Conservation Alliance and the ACBK we opened the new ‘Friends of saiga’ club in Koskol village, the eleventh such club in Kazakhstan.
We kicked off the club with our popular Day of Migratory Species, which went down a treat with kids and adults alike, and we’re sure that through the club, and passionate young people like Bekaly, we can secure the future of saigas for generations to come.
