The Antelope Killing Fields

Dead animals were scattered across the steppe in front of us. Up to the horizon. Thousands of them. That was the moment we understood that we were observing a mass mortality of catastrophic dimensions.

We were in Kazakhstan that day in May of 2015 to study the saiga antelope, a remarkable herd animal that grazes in semideserts, steppe, and grasslands, and has evolved to run long distances at high speeds. Our team