In honour of The International Day of Women and Girls in Science (11th February), Genevieve Stephens, Project Officer – Kazakh Protected Areas, takes us behind the scenes of a research expedition to the magnificent steppe of Kazakhstan. The RSPB is working with partners to protect this vast and important habitat for unique wildlife such as the Critically Endangered Saiga antelope. Read on to discover what life is really like out in the field.
What follows is my account of a month-long field expedition in May 2022, when I joined a team from the RSPB and the Association for the Conservation of the Biodiversity of Kazakhstan (ACBK) to assess the condition and biodiversity of the newly established, 720,000-hectare Bokey Orda-Ashiozek Protected Area in west Kazakhstan. Our findings will help us identify key species for further monitoring, inform our understanding of the region’s Saiga antelope population and contribute to the development of the Site Management Plan.
Saiga are sandy-coloured antelopes that are exceptionally well adapted to life on the steppe, with thick hair insulating them during freezing (-40°C) winters and distinctive bulbous noses that warm freezing winter air, then cooling and filtering dust during super-heated (+40°C) dry summers. In the past they migrated across the Eurasian steppes in their millions – even as far as the UK. However, following decades of poaching, habitat fragmentation and disease, the antelope was pushed to the brink of extinction. Since 2005, we’ve been involved in restoring their populations and things are really looking up, with 1.32 million Saiga now found roaming the steppe grasslands of Kazakhstan, up from less than 40,000 in 2005.
A herd of Saiga antelope. © Rob Field/RSPB.
Field diary - May 8th 6pm and we’ve set up camp, a 2-hour drive inside the northern boundary of the protected area. A makeshift village: kitchen tent, dining area and 17 small sleeping tents, pitched beside an artificial waterhole, amid miles of steppe.
Tents set up at Camp 1. © Michaela Butorova/RSPB.
Crepuscular light dapples the grassland in gold, but there’s an absence of warmth. Wind brittles against the tents. Soft, resonating, bleating sounds come from nearby herds of Saiga antelope.
Eight hours earlier, we’d flown from Astana west to Uralsk, amongst the oldest cities in Kazakhstan, established by the Cossacks in 1584 as a border outpost of the Russian empire.
From Uralsk, we drove through a featureless, undulating sea of grass. Vaster than the American prairie or the Argentine pampas, the Kazakh Steppe stretches over 750,000km. The name Kazakh is said to derive from the Turkish word qaz, to wander. Nomads migrated across the steppe on horseback for millennia, until mid-20th century Soviet collectivisation forced them to settle.
En route, we saw Lesser Kestrels and Steppe Eagles perched on road signs, watching passing cars with a leisurely indifference. A quick stop for lunch of dumplings and sauerkraut at a road-side restaurant.
Drawing closer to the protected area, we began to see newborn Saiga calves resting in the long grass.
Evening, cold and quiet. A shared meal of noodle broth and mutton.
Steppe Eagle perched on a road sign. © Rob Field/RSPB.
Field diary - May 16th A productive week. Typically, days begin at 8:00 with a breakfast of fried eggs and bread, or a bowl of boiled buckwheat. Over coffee, our science lead, Alyona Koshkina, confirms the day’s plan, and we split into cars and head to the first sampling point.
Most of our time is spent driving from point to point. We watch Little Ground Squirrels dart across the dirt tracks and disappear into plumes of feathergrass. At each point, we collect soil samples, conduct bird and mammal transects, and assess floral communities within a quadrat, carefully avoiding vipers sleeping in the grass. Above, Steppe Eagles hover.
Vipera renardii in the grass. © Michele Bowe/RSPB.
Occasionally we pass an ancient burial mound or kurgan, the only permanent legacy of Kazakhstan’s nomadic tribes, a reminder that this is also a cultural landscape.
This evening, Talgat - one of the team - cooks plov, a traditional Kazakh meal of aromatic rice, sweet garlic and meat. The first known documentation of plov is credited to the 10th century Persian scholar, Avicenna, who included recipes in his medieval books. It was later transported across the Silk Route, evolving into the Middle Eastern pilau, and Indian biryani.
Field diary - May 18th A day spent moving camp to the southern part of the protected area, allowing quicker access to the remaining sampling points. The new camp is beside the local barracks of one of Kazakhstan’s anti-poaching units, Okhotzooprom, members of whom greet us on arrival.
Bee-eaters flurry at the entrance of the camp. Nearby, a pair of Demoiselle Cranes stand motionless, their black and white plumage conspicuous against the yellowish-green of steppe.
Demoiselle Crane beside Camp 2. © Genevieve Stephens/RSPB.
Field diary - May 20th Out sampling. A warm, hazy morning. The air is filled with the continuous warbling of larks. We pass a newly hatched Steppe Eaglet - two further eggs beginning to hatch, nested in the long grass. In several months they will begin their migration to Africa and the Middle East.
A sense of what the views were like out in the field. © Genevieve Stephens.
Field diary – May 24th The fourth successive day of heavy rain. Confined to our tents, hours spent reading. The kitchen tent has become a quagmire of mud and stacked crates of soggy biscuits. Meetings are fleeting – crossing paths to exchange books and weak smiles.
Field diary - May 27th A very special day. Weather improved, our Kazakh colleagues arrange a visit to a banya (steam bath with a wood stove) at the nearest village. Our first real wash in over two weeks. Clean clothes, red cheeks, we share a plate of qurt - dry cheese made from fermented milk - on a sunny terrace.
Field diary - May 31st Penultimate day in the field and the third day of blazing sun. Having completed our land-based sampling points, we begin collecting environmental DNA samples from the Ashiozek river which runs through the protected area. We pass a reservoir and take a dip.
Sampling on the Ashiozek river. © Genevieve Stephens/RSPB.
Later, we’re invited by our neighbours in Okhotzooprom, Kazakhstan’s anti-poaching unit, to share a meal of beshbarmak - boiled mutton and potatoes, cooked with onions and served on a large metal platter - a national dish offered at the height of hospitality.
We toast new friendships, our joint efforts to restore Saiga populations and these ancient, awe-inspiring wild landscapes.
Meal with Okhotzooprom. © Genevieve Stephens/RSPB.
Restoring vast landscapes The RSPB is working to restore this important region through the Altyn Dala Conservation Initiative, a multi-national partnership driven by the aim to restore fully functioning steppe, semi-desert and desert ecosystems across the historic range of the Saiga antelope in Kazakhstan. In 2021, the Initiative was awarded by the UN as a highly prestigious World Restoration Flagship – one of the ten best examples of large-scale ecosystem restoration globally.
Find out more https://community.rspb.org.uk/ourwork/b/science/posts/protecting-kazakhstan-s-grasslands-steppes-in-face-of-future-uncertainty
https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/kazakhstans-golden-steppe-shines-again
https://altyndala.org/
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