

Death on the Steppes: Mystery Disease Kills Saigas - igonvalue
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/02/science/saiga-antelope-mystery-disease-die-off.html

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pvaldes
And there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for the sudden death of 10.000
herbivorous mammals that nobody seems to see: Chernobyl fire forests in
30-april-2015 releasing clouds of radioactive dust only 10 days before this
event. Dust travelling by air normally settle down after a raining episode.

Animals died in few hours with synthoms totally compatible with radioactive
poisoning in the chain food. Strange inmunosupresion, diarrhoea, pain in the
mouths and guts and problems with breathing. Saigas are animals with a
interesting nose that filters dust and those tissues are connect with a net of
blood capillaires so poisoning by dust could be quicker in this species.

If someone here have friends or know some scientists working in Kazakhstan,
please warn them that have extra care with saiga corpses and also with goats
and cattle and try to protect native people. Somebody should start looking for
radioactivity as soon as possible to discard or confirm this hypothese. I
think is the most logical solution to this mystery.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a96nEk-f6Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a96nEk-f6Y)

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kayfox
Looking at the radiation patterns from the Chernobyl accident itself:

[http://users.owt.com/smsrpm/Chernobyl/glbrad.html](http://users.owt.com/smsrpm/Chernobyl/glbrad.html)

I doubt that radiation from a fire in the area around Chernobyl would be
significant, especially in Kazakhstan.

The animals and people who died from the Chernobyl accident were exposed to
thousands of times as much radiation as had landed anywhere outside of the
Ukraine and Belarus.

~~~
schiffern
The spread of radioactivity depends on wind and weather patterns, which aren't
constant.

The article even mentions recent heavy rainfall in the steppe which could have
washed radioactive particles out of the upper atmosphere.

It's not that hard to disprove this theory with a Geiger counter, so it seems
worth checking.

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jessaustin
An article from the BBC [0] suggests that the animals' immune systems were
compromised to the point that they were killed by two endemic bacteria. The
suggestion is that they were in a weakened state due to this year's very cold
winter and very wet spring. Also they observe that this species has frequent
die-offs and repopulations. I suspect that would be more sustainable over the
species' original range, which apparently stretched from Britain to China
rather than just over one Kazakh national park.

[0] [http://www.bbc.com/news/science-
environment-32958032](http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32958032)

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veddox
Regardless of the actual cause of this mass-dying, what steps (if any) are
being taken to secure the species? Are any saigas being kept in quarantine
anywhere?

If one third of the total population can be wiped out within two weeks without
prior notice, it would make sense to me to keep a small subpopulation in
safety somewhere else.

~~~
pvaldes
Saiga is a little like the tasman tiger in that almost all zoos had some in
the last 60 years but lost its animals gradually. Is a gregarious animal that
needs a lot of space to be itself and is very fragile also, living short lives
in zoos (less than 5 years). In the reproductive season males seem prone to
forget all except sex, stop to eat and die easily (bassically sacrifice
itselves for giving a better survival probability to pregnant females).
Females have only one or very few babies in its entire live when in zoos.

ISIS (the International Species Information System) is a software/database
used to trace all rare animals captive in zoos all around the world.

[http://www2.isis.org/](http://www2.isis.org/)

After ISIS this species could be very rare in zoos currently with an entire
world zoo population of maybe 2-4 specimens only: A couple of females in
Moscow at least. Dallas, Cologne, Seoul, New Jersey, Beijing, Berlin and San
Diego had saigas in the past but it seems that no one survived until today.

The species does much better in semi-captive environments. At least a place in
Ukraine (and maybe other in Roskow and Palmyra) have small herds of 50-250
animals running free in big enclosures. The problem is that we know that those
herds can be entirely wipped in the blink of an eye.

Illegal poachers also killed in 2014 the equivalent to many times the entire
captive world population.

