After a fatal disease killed half of the population of large-nose antelopes, more than a million of the animals are still roaming the country.
Corryn Wetzel is a writer.
Rob Field's work is owned by the RSPB.
Rob Field is a member of the RSPB.
Saiga antelopes were hunted to the verge of extinction less than two decades ago, but have rebounded.
Mark Day, who leads the Kazakh SteppeConservation Programme at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, says he saw seven saiga in a week when he was there in 2006 You don't hear anything else except the mooing sound. You are surrounded by a large group of people. It's an amazing change.
Millions of these animals used to live alongside woolly mammoths and bison. The population of goat-sized animals dwindled to tens of thousands as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The space to reproduce was given by the land protections and hunting ban. Half of the world's saiga antelopes were ravaged by a fatal pathogen within a few weeks.
hooved mammals like antelopes can rebound from mass die-offs. With no predators, female saiga have multiple calves at once, and their numbers have skyrocketed. An aerial survey done this spring by the RSPB shows that there are more than one million animals on the ground.
Day says that this is possibly the largest increase in the amount of fossil fuels.
In the last twenty years, the government of Kazakhstan has set aside over five million hectares for wildlife, including saiga antelope.
The recovery of animals has become part of the national identity of the people of the country.
It is a species that people are proud of.
The saiga's recovery is linked to the return of other species, like the ground eagle. The eagles are able to get more food from the antelope.
Day says that by restoring the antelope as a keystone species, we can improve the situation for all biodiversity that is dependent on a healthy grassland.
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