Saigas in Stepnoi reserve.©GEO Magazine.

Saiga antelope numbers decreased by 95% over 15 years due to poaching for meat and horns. The SCA’s guiding principles are to conserve the saiga antelope through local partnerships, focussed on sustainable long-term solutions that are based on sound science. The Saiga is our target species; however we aim to conserve the steppe ecosystem as a whole, taking into account human needs.

Saiga News, our biannual bulletin in six languages (English, Russian, Chinese, Uzbek, Kazakh, Mongolian), was developed as a service to all those working on saigas, including conservationists, governments and the public throughout the world, but particularly within the range states. Our previous RSG enabled us to establish Saiga News as a major component of the international response to the saiga's plight, bringing together diverse actors and ensuring experience is shared. In this continuation project we will develop Saiga News by: enhancing range state scientists' capacity to publish internationally through introducing peer review support for authors; building its role as the primary communication tool for the CMS MOU on saiga conservation; and scientists, conservationists and local people access to Saiga information in their own language. This was in response to a perceived disconnection between in-country knowledge and actions and the decisions made in international forums.

Increasing the impact of Saiga News is a cornerstone in our strategy for improving international collaboration, dissolving the geographical and institutional boundaries that can stifle conservation, and emphasising long-term, sustainable outcomes. We aim to:

1/ aid more effective Saiga conservation through the exchange of project analysis and the coordination of activities between conservationists in different countries of the Saiga’s range,

2/ improve capacity for in-country, bi-lateral and international cooperation, with knock-on benefits for conservation in general,

3/ transfer knowledge and best-practice science to countries and organisations where this is limited, and

4/ along with the Saiga Resource Centre (SRC) website, form part of a global communication strategy for coordinating and monitoring the CMS MOU on Saiga conservation, to help create a more unified Saiga community.