Rare antelopes spotted in Chelyabinsk Region (video)
Two saigas were spotted in the Bredinsky District. This was reported on Friday, January 30, by the Ministry of Ecology of Chelyabinsk Region. The animals were filmed on video.
The saigas were seen in the «Naslednitskoye» hunting ground, 13 kilometers from the settlement of Bredy. They were previously spotted in the same area in August last year.
«It is noteworthy that the appearance of saigas in the region was last noted several decades ago,» said the Ministry of Ecology. «In the 1970s–1980s, they occasionally wandered in from the adjacent territory of Kazakhstan. In subsequent years, the species was not registered in the region, which is associated with a decrease in the number of Kazakh populations.»
The saiga is an even-toed ungulate mammal from the subfamily of true antelopes. In 2002, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classified them as critically endangered. Later, the saiga population increased significantly. In 2023, the species was moved to the green category — species near threatened, in Kazakhstan it is classified as an animal whose numbers need to be regulated. Originally, they inhabited a large territory in the steppes and semi-deserts of Eurasia from the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains and the Caucasus to Dzungaria and Mongolia. Currently, saigas live only in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, with incursions into Turkmenistan, in Russia (in Kalmykia, Astrakhan Region, Altai Republic, Volgograd and Saratov regions) and western Mongolia.
Last summer, farmers in the Saratov Region faced an invasion of saigas. For regions bordering Kazakhstan, this became a real disaster. Our colleagues from 164.RU visited the site. Details are in this report.
