Antelope stampeding to extinction

The saiga antelope - one of the world's most endangered mammals - could be stampeding towards extinction simply because there are not enough males to go round.

Eleanor Milner-Gulland of Imperial College London and Russian colleagues report in Nature science magazine today that the saiga buck normally maintains a harem of 12 to 30 females. But because males are hunted for their horns, which are used in traditional Chinese medicine, females could now outnumber males by 100 to one.

The population was once around 1m. Now the herds in the grasslands of Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan total 50,000 and there are not enough males to go round.

"They were so numerous before and they are crashing at 50% a year," Dr Milner-Gulland said. "They are actually halving each year. So even at 50,000, if you are halving each year, you have a fairly short time to extinction. The thing that is really scary is that we are seeing indirect effects of the hunting on reproduction. And once reproduction is compromised, the crash can go even faster."

Saiga populations have crashed in the past, and then risen. The animals were protected under the old Soviet regime. They have now become a source of food and pelts. The horns are supposed to have aphrodisiac qualities.