2 Years Left: A Saiga Tribute

A tribute to the saiga antelope. Please watch all the way through.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• saiga
• endangered
• animals
• shelter
• years
• left
• tribute
• wildlife

[martinhjerpe]

this is annoying, doing a work about saigas. the problem is that from some sources say there are plenty of saigas left in the wild because of their protection while others say they are on the edge of extinction(can't use that source because its not "reliable"). Why are there so little information about saigas? How shall i know which is right? please, give me a reliable source.

[zoeyandray]

One thing you have to look at is how recent the source is because their numbers have dropped almost 50% in the past decade. I get most of my research from goverment cites or encyclopedias. These are the most accurate.

[girlanghi]

Thanks for making this film. The main use of the horns is for Chinese medicine. They claim that it is an aphordisic. The people who actually poach the saiga are usually desperatly poor and need the money to survive.The greedy bastards who pay a lot to consume powdered horn are the real villians. Without quashing the market in China etc, the saiga will always be under threat. Sad isn't it ? x x x

[zoeyandray]

No prblem. Whenever I ask people if they know what a saiga is they always say no. I decided to try and change that by making people more aware. I bet not all of the people who poach them are poor but a majority most likely are. Even if I was poor I could never do that. I can't even eat meat let alone kill a highly endangered species.. I do agree that the people who buy that medicine and other siaga products are also awful.

[mizofan]

I saw a series in the UK in the 1980's with the famous naturalist Gerald Durrell in the Soviet Union, and bought the book, in which the saiga featured. I'm shocked to hear they're so endangered now. Only saiga have a right to saiga horns.

[zoeyandray]

I agree with you 100%

These people need to realize what they're doing.

[cortezawwris]

I am sorry that not true, only places outside the wild they have them is Moscow and Cologne zoos and another nature park.

[artgoat]

Their numbers have actually dropped more than 80% in the last decade.

[artgoat]

They have a small herd of these in Oklahoma city (which is about as unlike Mongolia as you can get, but they seem to handle the heat okay). I've heard recent census numbers ranging around 1,200 directly observed (EDGE survey, as of Jan 2009), but that's still critically low. Their numbers fell 80% in the 2000/2001 dzud (hard winter). Another dzud could wipe them out.

[CrapolaLipGuy]

If there were a million left in the wild, they wouldn't be labelled as "critically endangered."

The estimate is between 800-1,800. It was on the news in 08.