Vera Voronova: One of the recent book that we published was about specifically the steppe animals, because I am, as a child, I grew up knowing a lot about African animals and very much little about what kind of animals lives in my country. And this is exactly, we want to change altitude of the people to know more about nature. They live close to.

Mike DiGirolamo: Welcome to the Mongabay Newscast. I’m your co-host, Mike DiGirolamo. Bring you weekly conversations with experts, authors, scientists, and activists, working on the front lines of conservation, shining a light on some of the most pressing issues facing our planet, and holding people in power to account. This podcast is edited on Gadigal Land. Today on the newscast we speak with Vera Anova, the Executive Director of the Association for the Conservation Biodiversity of Kazakhstan. Together with a team of NGO Partners and the government of Kazakhstan, the group came together in 2006 under the Altyn Dala Conservation Initiative to restore the Kazakh step ecosystem and rehabilitate the previously dwindling population of Saiga Antelope. Also known as the golden steppe. This massive grassland ecosystem is more than three times the size of the United Kingdom. The saga, once numbering only in the tens of thousands, have reached nearly 4 million today. For this monumental achievement, Altyn Dala was awarded the 2024 Earth Shot Prize in the protect and restore nature category. The Earth Shot Prize was launched by David Attenborough and the UK’s Prince William. In 2020, each winner is awarded a grant of 1 million pounds to continue their work. In this conversation, Voronova details the painstaking effort by the initiative, which used a combination of protected areas, wildlife rangers, conservation, technology, and monitoring and local knowledge to rehabilitate the step over the past two decades, she explains the challenges encountered along the way. Lessons learned. What species the team is working on helping rehabilitate next. It’s an impressive and inspiring look at what can be accomplished when civil society, government, and local communities unite to restore nature the benefit of all.

Mike: So congratulations on your Earth Shot prize. Can you just give us an overview of what this prize was for and, and why did Alton Dela why was it awarded this prize?

Vera: Yeah, I think everyone is still on their wave of their, like be happy and be excited about us as a partnership winning a. Price and we’re still receiving a lot of messages congratulation. And uh, it’s really great that our initiative because of this price, start to be recognized globally because this price is the sign of the great efforts from the last two decades of the so many people around our partnership who has been contributed firstly for the saiga recovery in Kazakhstan from just 30,000 animals to almost four millions this year. And on the same time, it’s bring a lot of recovery and a lot of benefits to the whole steppe ecosystem.

Mike: Yeah. And I have to say you know, I’ve, I’ve had the pleasure of looking at this story and it’s really remarkable what your team has done. So can you take us back to the beginning? When did you get involved with helping to rehabilitate the saiga antelope?

Vera: Yeah, so this has been started in early in 2004 when the government start to bring on the round tables, the civil society, scientific institutions. To say that we have a very critical situation with the Saiga antelope and Kazakhstan because of the illegal poaching and illegal trade of their horns, which is caused, it was the main reason of the decline of the saiga antelope. And the rest was a few discussions and result of them in 2005 actually, exactly. 20 years ago almost. There is Altyn Dala conservation initiative was framed. And MIU was signed between the government. My organization CBK is a National Civil Society Organization and two other international organizations are the Pharmacological Society and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. And later we have one more part. The Fauna & Flora join our initiative in 2011. And uh, this is initiative of the five partners where the government play the key role and push forward. Specifically strengthening of the law enforcement and anti potion activities and the creation of the protected areas and where the civil society from the other side provide data gathering, uh um, and complete monitoring and gathering the data. Provide evidence specifically to develop visibility, study for those protected areas to be established or expansion, and also provide data that would help rangers to understand the migration roads of the saiga. This been used by. Program that we did since 2009 by satellite tagging of the saiga. So understanding the migration and understanding the key sites really helped a lot to reinforce and to strengthen protection of the animals. And this was a huge program about the illegal trading. Also led by Fauna & Flora and us with the government to work with the border service and custom service on the number of the activities, like, prepare the group of the sniffer dogs in the country. Provide training program for the, our law enforcement staff, and and also. Least, but maybe most important there is a program, educational program in the rural areas, in those remote schools with the kids and the families who lives close to saiga to really bring more knowledge and understanding about how the nature is important, why saiga should be valued by local communities and. So those different I gave a very short description about this different combination of the skills and the efforts that all partners gave to the initiative. Um, uh, Helped to achieve the results.

Mike: And we’ll get a little bit more into how you got there with the results. First I want to talk about the golden steppe. I. Because it’s quite a remarkable and unique landscape. I myself didn’t realize how large it was. Can you, for those of our audience who might not be familiar, can you tell them about the golden steppe and what makes it so unique?

Vera: Kazakhstan. It’s the ninth biggest country in the world and 41% of our territories are covered in by the grasslands. So the, of course, the mix with the semi desert and wetlands, but majority would be covered by the grasslands and the area is still very. Large area of the native untouchable glassland. Even uh, Kastan was the part of the Soviet Union, and some people are familiar that this was a big agriculture campaign during the Soviet Union, which was called, and the major, major piece of lands of the post Soviet Union countries. They were ated for agriculture land. And of course there are many lands in Kazakhstan war recovery to this. But there are still a big part of this landscape uh, was never touched by agriculture. And these are the central part of the Kazak grasslands. Still remained a native and wild steppe. And to imagine it would be like ocean, but ocean of grass when you can drive for a day or two days and you don’t see like people, you don’t see even power lines in the proper roads and like only wildlife and. Sometimes also people think that it’s very flat landscape, but it’s not like this. You always have a lot, a little like value, small or reverse, and there are also a lot of water there, like the small wetlands, which is play a crucial role for the wildlife to resist.

Mike: And. Could you summarize for us what are the major threats to the steppe?

Vera: Actually steppe itself exists on our planet at this just because two important natural processes is the fires and the grazing and the. When the long known, like million years ago it would be that like wild animals provide this grazing balance for the grassland ecosystem. So, this day when we don’t have enough wild animals and when the Kazak people, they also lost their culture of the nomadic livestock breeding when they change the pasture. During different season, we have a huge issue of when the steppe doesn’t have enough grazing pressure. And there are a lot of biomass creation in the steppe because nobody eat this grass and the dry biomass provide a lot of fires. And actually the fires, they’re good for the steppe. But on the scale and the frequency, like it’s happened currently, it’s not very healthy anymore. And uh, this was a very good publication made to my colleagues with the, the colleagues from the German universities when they have did analysis to see how much, when the, the number of the livestock was decreasing after uh, broken of the Soviet Union. And this was the economical drop off in the country and the scale of the forest would be increase on the same time. So now we have the curve a bit of, bit positive and that’s why is it important to do the both things, to recover population of the wild animals where it’s possible. Like for example, it this part of the steppe which is still wild and there are no people. And where we do have a people and we do have livestock to bring back some sustainable approaches. And why buy, sell to bring back actually because they did exist in, in this land before and people used this and we just need to back to the, our like history memory. Yeah.

Mike: And so since you’ve rehabilitated the saiga to be, you know, close to 4 million, I believe is what you said earlier, what have you seen happen since then? , how has the ecosystem responded? I.

Vera: Actually this is one of the biggest challenge for us, because we still work on the huge scale and even we try to bring a lot of modern technologies to help us monitor saiga migration. It’s still a large landscape and sometimes it’s difficult to to do like. Any kind of research, proper research assessment specifically we would very much keen to see how much like biomass or the carbon has been changed within the soil of this landscape because of this saiga to, to the steppe. It’s definitely enduring. It’s. Definitely the, the positive and benefit contribution to the steppe. But we don’t have figures to provide the evidence for this. And uh, but uh, definitely we observed that in the some area we do have a stable population, for example, of the steppe eagle, which very much affects on the small mammals living on the ground and do small mammals. Very much related to the grazers because they like to live in the area with the short grass. So the short grass, which is grazed by animals. So this is the like whole ecosystem and the pieces of this as ecosystem effect to each other.

Mike: So you mentioned that data collection is a bit of a challenge there. Are there any specific technologies that you’re looking into perhaps using to to help you overcome that hurdle?

Vera: So there I already mentioned the satellite tagging, this one we use not only for saiga, we also use satellite tagging to understand migration of the birds. Specifically we do satellite tagging of the steppe eagle and the sociable lapwing, one of the flagship species of the grass system in Kazakhstan. So, for the last, I think already six years, we have been working with the government and the protected areas to establish monitoring and patrolling system, which is called smart. It’s been used quite widely in the, some of the African countries. And this is system which, how Rangers to collect information quickly and you don’t need to have an internet connection and you can upload your data quickly to the computer and soft itself, help analyze this data also quickly to understand what would be more efficient way to do patrolling. We also applied to use as many other conservationist group, the photo traps monitoring system. It helped to understand and identifying some kind of biodiversity leaves across the huge area. We do use the drones to help us also to monitor the landscape. For long, like for hours, like small planes. The currently with the local IT company, we also like everyone trying to think about how we can use artificial intelligence to help us. To make counts of the animals by using this picture from the drones or satellite images because the currently the saiga population, we have free populations across the HU country. We do have annual aerial survey funded by the government, so it’s paid by the government to do annual survey. But it’s still cost effective. And we are looking for the alternative solutions to use in the future. And maybe not only for the saiga, but for other wild that lives in the country. Another opportunity that we are looking for. The collaboration would be linked. Today another finalist of the UR price is, the Natural Metrics is the UK based, but the has a action around the world company who provides methodology for the rapid biodiversity assessments, specifically for the water and soil. When you instruct DNA from the water and you can do a quick assessment about the biodiversity of the different kind of water resources, the river, the.

Mike (note): Vera is referring to a technology called EDNA or environmental DNA. It’s a way to determine whether a species is present in a given area by sampling soil or water, and searching for traces of their DNA..

Vera: And we did already the piloting of this methodology. And we see this as one more opportunity for us to do the research for the biodiversity in the water in the future.

Mike (note): Hello again, listeners and thank you for tuning into the Monka Bay newscast. If you are a first time listener, welcome. Mongabay is a nonprofit newsroom that relies on the generosity of readers and listeners like you. If you want to pitch in and help Mongabay keep bringing you independent news from Nature’s Frontline, you can donate by going to mongabay.com and clicking on the button that says Donate in the upper right corner of the screen.

But if you can’t contribute, you can also help support us by leaving a review on the podcast platform of your choosing and subscribing to the show. Doing this helps raise our profile and it brings us to a wider audience. Thanks for tuning in. And now back to the conversation with Vera.

Mike: Something you mentioned that you incorporated local knowledge into your rehabilitation efforts. how did you do that and, and what was that knowledge?

Vera: So I think you are right that that I think this is exactly that we talk about, like to speak with the local people, just to understand what was their connection between the people and the wildlife in the previous year, how the livestock breeding, on the healthy way close to the wildlife, like this kind of information are very much valuable. Now to specifically, now we did some research and the reports on this valuable on the, see how this, combine livelihoods can be applied in the ecological corridors. For example, those psychological corridors that are connected to straight protected areas. But on the same time, those areas usually have the land owners, but they still have a value. For the wildlife, and this is exactly how we’re trying to adopt and assess how we can use kind of approaches specifically for example in this area and in Kazakh Stan total of four areas like this, psychological corridors and where there uh, um, join action plan between land owners and state protected areas and like civil society Cooper operates in these areas can be as a as approach.

Mike: You, you mentioned in another interview you gave that you know, while Kazakhstan, develops infrastructure, it’s noticing impacts on wildlife even when mitigation measures are implemented. Like, wildlife crossings for example. You used a railway as an example where animals were not using the wildlife crossing. So, this might be a bit tangential, but what are the lessons that conservationists and the government are learning from these projects?

Vera: I am, I’m, I’m hope that those cases really help to understand the one important moment that that this should be a proper assessment on the very early stage of the planning, because behavior of the animals can be very much difficult, not. Different not only from the species to species, but only with within one species, but with the different group. For example, as I mentioned already before, we have a repopulation of the saiga in Kazakhstan, and even across this nation, the animals, the group of this animals, they have a different behavior. And saiga as a group animal, they also very much effects and their behavior will be very much linked on the size of their group. The less group, then more, they more, they are more afraid about any kind of movements or the barriers. And this should be also, also considerate. And specifically for for the cross points like that it’s very much important because those facilities are very much expensive, cost effective, and to build anything like this you need to carefully assess the location because the another point, for example, for the saiga comparable, for example, to the pronghorn, they would not use very specific migration roads. They use like a very broad I would say migration corridors. We would say like this. And uh, uh, that’s why we communicate a lot about that. The solutions is not with the Crosspoint, but solution with alternative roads, which should be chosen carefully.

Mike: You have mentioned that you’re, you’re also working on restoring wild horse populations on the steppe. Can you tell us about, these wild horses and where you are along in that journey?

Vera: Yeah. So, uh, when initiative has been started, and the saiga would be always like the flagship and the priority species because we did have this emergency. Case to recover saiga, but the whole, the picture of the restoring the host that was always behind this and will be now a long term strategy and even the medium term. And we did spend few years. To enable to do some legislation changes in Kazakhstan because they’re the wild horses. They’ve been extinct in Kazakhstan long time ago, and they would be not even referenced to the official list of their threatened species. So this was a award has been done to include them to the official list of their, like, correct listed, spacious in Kazakhstan. And we were very much lucky that last year the government of Kazakhstan jointly with the Czech partners, specifically the Park Zoo. They’ve assigned the MU where the Prague Zoo committed to bring, around 45 horses during next five years with their, with, with the only resources where the Kaza is committed to. Accommodate those horses and cover the oil expenses on the ground for the adaptation and fuse fuse monitoring to be released. So, we do have already the success story from the Mongolia where there is a wild, sustainable population of the horses exist. So we are also learning from the experience and also we are learning from own experience on the work and with the translocation of the wild thetic ass. It’s like wild donkeys. And because we did work already before horses for these animals, we already have some experience on their introduction. So, now in the central of Kazakhstan and the steppe, yeah, we do have a saiga is recover. We do have already a few groups of the, this while Donkeys has been released, and a big group now in Enclosure during the adaptation time Will will be released this year. So the first group of the horses arrived last year, and we expect eight more horses this year. Will arrive in June.

Mike: Something else I heard you mention is that, your organization is looking at a way to mitigate the, the negative impacts of agriculture on biodiversity. Can you talk to us about that?

Vera: This actually coming back to what we already discussed about the. What would be the methodology would be approach of the livestock breeding because the, currently the livestock breeding would be allocated around villages, and these bring two issues, is bringing too much pressure around the villages and degradation of the land. And there is another type of degradation of the landscape on the remote area where there’s no any kind of grazers, for example, no saiga, no wild horses and other wild grazers, but on the same time snow, even the live tor to be grazed this steppe, and this is also degradation, but another type of the degradation of the land. And so there are this, there were some research has been done to understand how it works. How does the fire regimes degrading regimes affect healthy grass ecosystem. We also did research, as I mentioned already, how the agriculture expansion affect population of the small mammals because they would be a crucial, and they would be also like indicator. If the grass on are sustainable. And this was a also additional research to see, okay, like, because the small mammals, they become to be like the main food base for the birth of prey. And that’s, that’s why it was important also to understand how, how. Agriculture affect population on the, on the small mammals. And we also need to observe about like how agriculture expansion affect population of the sum of the steppe broad. Which logically would be nest on the ground because there are no trees and the birds would be laid their eggs on the ground, like the sociable lapwing and the steppe eagle, little bustard, and many, many of them. And we’ve been did this research specifically on the sociable lapwing because this would be the, one of the key species to see how, the expansion of the croplands affect survival of the nest, of the sociable lapwing. And we did have some also work with the local farmers to communicate and the rise awareness about how they can bring the new technologies of the land. To not negatively affect the bird’s nesting. And actually what we found there are already a lot of farmers, they do use this form of technologies like, proactive technologies when they would be, I will try to explain on the very, when they would cultivate land at a very early stage and when there is the nesting season is started, they would not come back with the equipment on the land and not would be damaged nest. So this is already works in some parts of our country.

Mike: Has been the response that you have received from either the people you’re working with on, on the ground or the, or the people you interact with in Kazakhstan? What has been the response to the success of this initiative that, that you’ve seen?

Vera: I think that generally public in Kazakhstan become to be more interested and more. Like, engaged with it, any kind of environmental topic and the news in Kazakhstan, they were met very well. I think that there were a lot of publication inside the country and we’ve seen so many positive comments about the people feel so proud about the Kazakhstan and the huge success of the saiga recovery. And I think specifically among the young population because they always remember that saiga is their threatened species and we, we protect the species because, for example, like, people age of my parents, they would still remember the time saiga would be hunted. A legal hunt for the meat that you can buy at the market. So they were remembered that time and they remembered the time that saiga threatened. But the young people, they don’t know this time of the saiga being used for meat. They only know the saiga is the iconic species, threatened species, and we need to protect them. And for them, I think specifically, it’s very much a special to see the recovery of those animals and see that this is efforts of the government, government, and the civil society organization have been recognized on the such high global level.

Mike: Well, Vera, is there anything else that you would like people to know either about the work you’re doing or the golden steppe in Kazakhstan that we haven’t talked about already? I.

Vera: I am really glad that we speak even for the time. I think we covered quite a lot. And because we just speak about the public and the people and I want to just to come back and to highlight again that how much we feel important to bring the knowledge and rise awareness among the public in the cities, but also the people who lives in the rural areas. And we put a lot of effort to produce educational materials on the local Kazakh language for the kids. One of the recent book that we published was about specifically the steppe animals, because I am, as a child, I grew up knowing a lot about African animals and very much little about what kind of animals lives in my country. And this is exactly, we want to change altitude of the people to know more about nature. They live close to. Yeah.

Mike: Well, Vera, thank you so much for speaking with me. It’s been a pleasure.

Mike (note): If you want to read more about the Alton De La Conservation Initiative, you can find a link in the show notes. As always, if you’re enjoying the Mongabay newscast or any of our podcast content and you wanna help us out, we encourage you to spread the word about the work we’re doing by telling a friend and leaving a review. Word of mouth is the best way to help expand our reach. But you can also support us by becoming a monthly sponsor via our Patreon page at patreon.com/mongabay. Mongabay is a nonprofit news outlet, so when you pledge a dollar per month, it makes a big difference and it helps us offset production costs. So if you’re a fan of our audio reports from Nature’s Frontline, go to patreon.com/mongabay to learn more and support to the Mongabay newscast. But you can also read our news and inspiration from Nature’s frontline at mongabay.com, or you can follow us on social media, find Mongabay on LinkedIn at Mongabay News, and on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Mastodon, Facebook, and TikTok, where our handle is @Mongabay or on YouTube @MongabayTV. Thanks, as always for listening.