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The saiga is a critically endangered, migratory antelope of the Eurasian steppe, which declined by more than 95% in a decade, from a population of a million in the early 1990s to an estimated 30,000 by 2003. The species has received little attention, though in recent years, levels of research have increased. The saiga is a keystone species; the decline of the saiga has lead to severe ecological changes in the steppe ecosystem.
Awareness campaigns are employed in many situations as a form of environmental education, in order to raise awareness and knowledge of the participants.
Aimed at adults and children alike, their overall aim is to foster positive attitudes and behaviour towards the target. It is also proposed that knowledge transfer between community members can multiply the effect of the campaign.
Participatory monitoring aims to involve local people in monitoring natural resources in their communities. It has gained popularity in recent years as a method of collecting low cost ecological data while engaging people in conservation and increasing their awareness of ecological issues surrounding their natural resources. In many areas with high biodiversity local people have low scientific capacity, raising questions about the usefulness and accuracy of the data collected.
There is a need for high quality impact evaluation in conservation biology. In response to this need there is a growing body of work on how best to evaluate conservation interventions. However, often these methods are often too time consuming or resource heavy for small NGOs to carry out. I trialled the Theory of Change of approach to impact evaluation using the Saiga Conservation Alliance’s work in Uzbekistan as a case study. I used the approach to construct diagrammatic representations of the Theories of Change focusing on the threat of oil and gas companies and poaching to vulnerable populations of saiga antelope (Saiga tatarica) on the Ustyurt plateau.
The saiga antelope, Saiga tatarica, is a critically endangered species but relatively little is known about the population that migrate south into the Ustyurt plateau of Uzbekistan during the winter months. This population is now facing both new conservation opportunities and new threats. Funding has been made available for saiga monitoring in the region and a protected area extension for the saiga has been proposed, whilst simultaneously a border fence built between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan threatens to cut off the saiga migration route and cause animal deaths due to entanglement. Science is needed to support conservation decisionmaking on all areas of change and time is limited.
Habitat degradation through anthropogenic disturbance is one of the main drivers of global biodiversity loss. Resource extraction by the oil and gas industry is a large and growing component of this disturbance. This study quantifies the impacts of disturbance from oil and gas infrastructure on the semi-arid vegetation of the ecologically important Ustyurt Plateau, Uzbekistan. The footprint of oil and gas development on the Ustyurt is set to grow considerably in the future, so understanding the ecological consequences of infrastructure expansion will be vital, to mitigate negative impacts.
The Saiga antelope (Saiga tatarica tatarica) has experienced spectacular declines in all four of its Central Asian populations in recent decades. Anthropogenic factors are considered to be the root cause, with poaching considered to be the primary factor. This activity is fuelled by the demand for meat for local sustenance and the relatively high income that can be gained by selling the horns, possessed only by the males, to the Chinese market for traditional medicine.