Mass Mortalities & Disease Response

SCA has played a long-term role in helping the saiga conservation community respond to major disease outbreaks and mass mortality events. Our work has included supporting investigations, connecting researchers and conservation organisations, communicating findings, helping mobilise emergency support, and turning lessons from individual crises into practical guidance for future responses.

In 2010, when nearly 12,000 saigas died in the Ural population of western Kazakhstan, SCA used Saiga News to bring together different scientific perspectives on the event and raise the profile of disease as a major conservation threat. A further mortality event in western Kazakhstan in 2011 led to a rapid-response veterinary investigation examining the 2010 and 2011 outbreaks, their likely causes, and the implications for future disease response.

The scale of this work increased dramatically after the 2015 Betpak-Dala mass mortality event, when more than 200,000 saigas died in just three weeks. SCA was part of the wider international response through its scientific and conservation network. SCA co-founder E.J. Milner-Gulland contributed to the multidisciplinary research team investigating the event, helping connect ecological knowledge of saigas with veterinary, climatic, and field evidence. The resulting research identified haemorrhagic septicaemia caused by Pasteurella multocida as the immediate cause of death and showed how unusual environmental conditions had contributed to the outbreak.

A major part of SCA’s contribution was ensuring that these lessons led to better preparedness rather than remaining only in scientific publications. Working with veterinary and conservation specialists, SCA helped develop practical Standard Operating Procedures for responding to future saiga mortality events. These set out how unusual mortality should be reported, investigated, sampled, documented, and coordinated, helping field teams and authorities respond more consistently and rapidly. The guidance was translated into Russian and shared across the saiga range.

This work became immediately relevant during the 2016-2017 Peste des Petits Ruminants outbreak in Mongolia. SCA worked with Mongolian and international partners to support the emergency response, help mobilise resources, strengthen monitoring and protection of surviving saigas, and apply lessons developed from earlier outbreaks. By 2017, the response procedures developed through this work were already being used during the Mongolian crisis.

SCA also played an important communication and coordination role. We helped share findings between scientists, governments, conservation organisations, and the wider public, including communicating the results of the 2015 investigation when they were published in Science Advances in 2018. This combination of research, emergency coordination, practical procedures, and knowledge-sharing has helped strengthen the ability of the wider saiga conservation community to respond when mass mortality events occur.

With thanks to our funders
This work has been supported through different phases by Fauna & Flora International, the Wildlife Conservation Network and its supporters, the People’s Trust for Endangered Species, the Convention on Migratory Species, and other supporters of saiga research and emergency conservation.

Project partners
This work has involved the Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity of Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan’s government and veterinary authorities, the Royal Veterinary College, research institutions in Kazakhstan and internationally, the Convention on Migratory Species, Wildlife Conservation Society Mongolia, WWF-Mongolia, and other veterinary and conservation partners across the saiga range.