The Eurasian Steppe is a vast grassland that stretches in the West from Romania and Ukraine all the way through much of Russia to the Far East of the Eurasian continent. In the past this huge grassland supported vast populations of ungulates (hoofed animals). The damage to the ecosystem has been most severe in the far East of this huge wildlife habitat, in an area called the Eastern Steppe.
There are two species in particular that have done particularly poorly in recent times. The first is the Saiga, an antelope with a peculiar nose that would look more at home on an elephant seal. These odd looking antelope continue to carry out one of the last huge migrations that still occur on land. Twice a year the entire number wood merge into one large herd, and move together across the landscape.
Unfortunately, in 2004 a count of the Saiga showed that their population had fallen by 95%. A large part of the blame for this will fall on poachers, after their horns and their meat. However they were also suffering greatly from changes in the climate leading to large droughts, well as for competition from domestic livestock that was increasingly grazed in places that had in the past been only use by wild animals. Furthermore, more and more of the land was used for the production of fossil fuels.
Unfortunately in 2015 even as the Saiga population was slowly recovering, a illness then killed about 2/3 of the remaining animals. After this only around 100,000 of the antelopes remained in the world.
In good times Saiga can recover astoundingly fast, however recent times these population crashes have occurred too close together to allow a recovery to take place. Increasingly the nations that Saiga occur in are working together to try to protect the remaining populations; time will tell whether this is successful.
Another sizeable species that lives in this region of Asia is the Asiatic Wild Ass. This animal once ranged from the Mediterranean through to Eastern Mongolia, however in the last two centuries its population has been dramatically reduced, to just 3% of its historical number.
Although this species is doing relatively well in Mongolia, in the central part of its range it is seriously endangered and only found in small areas. As it is felt that the pressures that lead to the local extinction of this animal in the Central Steppes have reduced, people have started to translocate animals from other parts of the range into this area. The translocated animals have been transported 1200 kilometres from the South West of the country. The initial number of animals was small, only 9, however this was essentially a test of the method of translocation and it is expected that the numbers will be added to greatly in the coming years. It is worth noting that in the part of the country they are being translocated from, they are doing extraordinary well and indeed in the park that they have come from there are too many of them.
The process of recuperating the far Eastern step back to its original complete ecosystem is one that will take some time, and is likely to take quite a few years, however it appears that the start of this process has been successful.
