In the Ulytau region, armed poachers who were engaged in illegal hunting of saiga antelopes have been detained.
“Police officers, as part of a joint raid with inspectors from the Republican State Enterprise ‘PO Okhotzooprom’, uncovered a poaching group of four people in the Ulytau district,” reported Polisia.kz.
Those detained were travelling on two motorcycles. The poachers were found to have 15 saiga carcasses, 29 sawn-off horns, and two smoothbore shotguns. They are residents of a neighbouring region.
“A criminal case has been opened, and an investigation is underway. A preventive measure of detention has been chosen for them. The suspects have been placed in a temporary detention facility,” the statement says.
It was previously reported that in the first four months of this year, authorities seized 15,200 metres of fishing nets, 9 tonnes of fish and fish products, around 3,500 saiga horns, 135 hunting weapons, and 81 cubic metres of illegally harvested timber from illegal circulation.
Meanwhile, in June it became known that in the Zhetysu region, a local resident was detained for storing saiga horns in his attic, valued at 1.2 billion tenge.
Even earlier, in March, the border service department of the National Security Committee in the Zhetysu region detained three Kazakh citizens in the border zone attempting to export 1,382 saiga horns. The damage to the state was then estimated at over 3.5 billion tenge. Incidentally, according to our data, one horn on the black market costs around $2,000.
The editorial team of FBRK has compiled a complete chronology of the campaign to ‘remove’ saiga antelopes from their natural habitat. It can be viewed via this link.