In Kazakhstan, an information campaign against saiga antelopes has begun again. This was reported by agricultural expert and founder of the FBRK Kirill Pavlov.
In his Telegram channel, the expert questioned: how justified is the desire of the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources to return at all costs to the so-called 'removal' of saiga antelopes, or more simply, the extermination of the steppe antelope sacred to Kazakhs, under the highly questionable pretext that it allegedly damages farms in western Kazakhstan. It supposedly eats and tramples crops, which, by someone's wise decision, appeared precisely on the traditional migration routes of this ancient animal, a contemporary of mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses.
As Pavlov writes, would it not be more sensible to address the problem of desertification, which causes far greater damage to agriculture than any cloven-hoofed animal that has lived in its natural habitat for millennia. The expert demonstrated on a map the dynamics of this frightening process in Western Kazakhstan from 2000 to 2024.
According to him, the red areas indicate a significant decrease in vegetation over the last 25 years, which also testifies to a noticeable deterioration in land quality.
'Land degradation was calculated using the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI). This index takes into account the red, near-infrared and blue light spectra, which allows for a more accurate assessment of the density and condition of the vegetation cover', the report states.
For context, in July 2023, the West Kazakhstan Agrarian and Technical University named after Zhangir Khan presented a biological justification for the so-called 'saiga population management' to the Ministry of Ecology.
In October 2023, it became known that the Ministry of Ecology had begun hiring hunters to shoot saiga antelopes in the West Kazakhstan Region. The average cost of the service was 4,000 tenge per dead saiga.
At the beginning of November that year, the ministry established a period of permitted hunting for saiga antelopes, regardless of their sex, age, or habitat: from 1 October to 15 November. At the same time, in the West Kazakhstan Region, mass livestock deaths were recorded. Hundreds of animals died from an infectious disease at the time.
In April of this year, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev announced that he would reverse the Ministry of Ecology's decision to shoot saiga antelopes and ban the so-called 'removal' of the saiga population, calling them symbols of the Kazakh steppe.