Two decades ago a group of NGOs came together with the government of Kazakhstan to save the dwindling population of saiga antelope living in the enormous Golden Steppe. Since then, the Altyn Dala Conservation Initiative has successfully rehabilitated the saiga (Saiga tatarica) from a population of roughly 30,000 to nearly 4 million. For this effort, it was awarded the 2024 Earthshot Prize in the “protect & restore nature” category.

Joining the podcast to discuss this achievement is Vera Voronova, executive director of the Association for the Conservation Biodiversity of Kazakhstan, an NGO involved in the initiative.

Voronova details the cultural and technological methods used to bring the saiga back from the brink and to help restore this massive grassland ecosystem.

“When [the] initiative [was] started, the saiga would be always like the flagship and the priority species because we did have this emergency case to recover saiga,” she says. “But the whole … picture of restoring the [steppe] was always behind this, and will be now a long term strategy.”

Subscribe to or follow the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, and you can also listen to all episodes here on the Mongabay website.

Image credit: Saiga calf. Photo by Kibatov Arman/ACBK.

--------

Timecodes

(00:00) Saving the saiga antelope

(07:13) The Golden Steppe is massive

(13:00) Using conservation technology

(17:07) Incorporating local knowledge

(20:56) Wild horses and agriculture

(26:40) Community connection

(29:37) Credits