Mammals, Conservation Efforts for However, the species has now been reintroduced to the wild and is displaying natural behavior (Boyd and Bandi, 2002) Case Studies Mammals cover such a range of habitats, biology, and interactions with humans that it is very difficult, in three short case studies, to give a flavor of the status and conservation efforts for all mammal species However, we have chosen three case studies that exemplify many of the issues, covering a variety of species and continents; the saiga antelope in Central Asia, hutias and solenodons (small mammals found on the islands of the Caribbean), and the cheetah and wild dog across their range in Africa Major omissions include marine mammals and the bats, but we hope that the insights from our case studies shed light on some of the issues facing other mammals as well Saiga Antelopes The saiga antelope (Saiga tatarica) has had a torrid time in the past two decades Buffeted by geopolitical forces – the breakup of the Soviet Union and high Chinese demand for its horn – its population crashed in the first half of the 2000s, leading to the dramatic uplisting of the species on the IUCN Red List from Near-threatened to Critically Endangered, the highest threat level, in one step Since the mid-2000s, however, substantial conservation efforts have been mobilized on every scale, and the species now represents a conservation success story, despite the continued threats which it faces Background The saiga antelope (Figure 1) is a nomadic herding species found in the semiarid rangelands of Kazakhstan, Russia, and Mongolia (Figure 2) It has two subspecies, S t tatarica and Saiga t mongolica; the latter is found only in Mongolia The Kazakhstan populations of the species migrate over very long 711 distances, up to 1000 km, moving between winter pastures in southern desert regions and summer pastures in the steppe zones of the north This enables them to track green vegetation and to escape from the heaviest snows of the winter (Bekenov et al., 1998) Within its summer and winter ranges, the species is nomadic, a response to the harsh climatic conditions of the continental ecosystem in which it lives, allowing herds to move rapidly away from areas where there is bad weather or where other threats exist The species stops to give birth in huge aggregations in the spring, which is thought to be a predator-swamping adaptation, protecting the calves from wolf predation Females twin consistently once they reach maturity This is unusual among ungulates and means that the population can increase very rapidly in good years, allowing populations to recover quickly from overhunting, harsh winters or disease outbreaks It has a harem breeding system, in which each adult male controls and mates with a group of 12–30 adult females, making the population resilient to male-biased hunting, which is important because only adult males bear horns, which are highly prized in Chinese medicine Overall, therefore, the saiga antelope is a resilient species that is capable of withstanding relatively heavy hunting pressure and of recovering quickly from episodes of high mortality The saiga has been hunted for its meat, horns and hide since prehistoric times In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was hunted in large numbers by the St Petersburg Imperial court By the early twentieth century, hunting had reduced it to near-extinction Horn prices were very high, with horns exported for use in Chinese medicine During the Soviet period, up to the mid-1990s, the population was well managed, with legal protection and regulated commercial hunting, and grew to relative stability However, the situation changed dramatically with the breakup of the Soviet Union Rural poverty and unemployment, combined with the opening of the border with China and high prices for horn, as well as a collapse in law enforcement and management, led to massive poaching of the species, causing a 95% population decline in just 10 years and triggering its listing as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List in 2001 (Figure 3) Since conservation efforts started, around 2003/2004, the global population of the species has started to rise steadily, although it is still well below its 1980s level Threats Figure Picture of a saiga antelope The saiga is about the size of a domestic goat, with a sandy-colored upper body and a creamy underside This picture shows an adult male, which has horns of an unusual translucent amber color The species’ most striking feature is a protuberant nose, which swells further in rutting males Picture by Navinder Singh The major threat that has affected populations of S t.tatarica over the past 20 years has been massive illegal hunting for both horns to supply international markets and meat for local consumption, causing the population decline shown in Figure However, limiting factors in the past have included habitat degradation from overgrazing, infrastructure development, particularly canals in which large numbers drowned, and epidemics of disease, probably contracted from the livestock that share the saiga’s range (Bekenov et al., 1998) It is important not to forget these other factors when focusing on the main threat of poaching, as was demonstrated in May 2010, when 12,000 saigas were found dead in the Ural population after several years without any sign of disease The dead saigas were adult females which had just given birth, and although the ultimate cause of death is still not clear, this was