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Saiga Antelope

The saiga antelope (, Saiga tatarica), or saiga, is an antelope which is critically endangered, and during antiquity inhabited a vast area of the Eurasian steppe, spanning the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains in the northwest and Caucasus in the southwest, into Mongolia in the northeast and Dzungaria in the southeast. During the Pleistocene, they ranged across the mammoth steppe from the British Isles to Beringian North America. Today, the dominant subspecies (S. t. tatarica) is only found in one region in Russia (in the Republic of Kalmykia and Astrakhan Oblast) and three areas in Kazakhstan (the Ural, Ustiurt, and Betpak-Dala populations). A portion of the Ustiurt population migrates south to Uzbekistan and occasionally Turkmenistan in winter. more »