https://www.insidenova.com/new...85-b12a2b7c96f5.html


Kazakhstan to allow hunting once endangered antelopes

AFP AFP May 28, 2025 Updated 56 mins ago


Abduaziz MADYAROV


Kazakhstan said Wednesday it will authorise the hunting of saiga antelopes, once an endangered species that the government says is now threatening farming in the vast Central Asian country.

The country previously backtracked on lifting a hunting ban on the species, recognisable by their long, trunk-like rounded snout.

President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev had called the antelopes "sacred animals for the Kazakh people". The saiga was massively poached in the 1990s.


State media cited Kazakhstan's deputy minister of ecology as saying the decision to hunt them was "necessary due to the rapid growth of their population" and "complaints from farmers".

A spokeswoman for Kazakhstan's ecology ministry told AFP Wednesday that "according to scientific research, it is possible to eliminate up to 20 percent of the total population without harming the species".


The exact number of animals allowed to be culled and the start date of the hunt are yet to be determined, she added.

Farmers complain that saigas have stomped thousands of square kilometres of farms, where crops are also threatened by climate change.

According to the latest estimates, there are 4.1 million saigas in the former Soviet republic, representing almost the entire global population, a number that could rise to five million by the end of the year.

An attempt to lift the ban was met with opposition in 2023, a rare occurrence in Kazakhstan, where freedom of expression is limited. The authorities reversed the decision a few months later.


Poaching of the antelopes exploded after the collapse of the Soviet Union, particularly as their horns are used in traditional medicine.

Water shortages and disease had also endangered the species before the Kazakh authorities introduced a policy to protect them.

dr-bk-asy/oc/fg

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maybe one day they will be back to the Yukon.

Phil you are probably the only guy I know that knows the Saiga antelope were in the northern Yukon years ago. It would be rather cool if they transplanted some back in the YT, but I doubt the current crop of bureaucrats would go for it.

Didn’t some disease almost wipe out the saiga a few years back?

It cracks me up when there is any issues it’s always the global warming/climate change
It really got old but these politicians/whatever keep repeating it
They gotta be smart individuals but do they realize they are defeating the purpose of that particular language?

quote:

Originally posted by Skyline:
Phil you are probably the only guy I know that knows the Saiga antelope were in the northern Yukon years ago. It would be rather cool if they transplanted some back in the YT, but I doubt the current crop of bureaucrats would go for it.

ah ah Kelly yes that is so strange ... but we can hope: they already bring back (introductions) bison, elk and some muskox that came back naturally ... imagine up there in the steppes saiga and caribou roaming like it was with lion and woolly mammoth or any new ones ...