Kazakhstan

WCS in Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan is a big and diverse country with one of the largest intact grassland ecosystems in the northern hemisphere, extensive deserts and elements of two of Asia's great mountain ranges - the Tien Shan and the Altai. With the fall of the former Soviet Union in 1991, the outside world realized that this country contained some of the most significant populations of wildlife that were rare in other parts of Europe and Asia. WCS began funding conservation-oriented research in northern Kazakhstan in 2000 beginning with Todd Katzner and Evgeny Bragin's research on eagles at the Naurzum National Nature Reserve. More recently WCS has also funded research on Saiga antelope, whose populations are threatened with extinction due to over-hunting.

The Human Aspect
Since 1991, the people of the former Soviet Union have been buffeted by economic and social uncertainties that make day-to-day living difficult. In this context, relatively abstract thoughts of conservation often become secondary to more concrete problems linked to basic necessities. However, there is a core of committed conservation workers in Kazakhstan. The country is historically rich with natural resources, and extraction of those minerals, faunal and agricultural products has dominated the economy, often to the detriment of the environment. These activities, whether legal (mineral and agricultural development) or illegal (poaching) have had important consequences for conservation in Kazakhstan.

Threats
The threats to wildlife in Kazakhstan are multi-faceted. In the north, agricultural development is destroying much of the previously untouched steppe, undermining the base on which many species exist. Habitat loss impacts floral biodiversity as well as many birds and mammals, including ground squirrels, steppe marmots and  ground nesting birds. Furthermore, some of these are keystone species -- other species rely on them, either as a food resource or because of the changes their presence has on the steppe. Poaching is also a serious concern for species such as saiga antelope, goitered gazelle, argali, Siberian ibex, and the saker falcon, which is unsustainably taken for use in falconry. Both legal and illegal logging have huge impacts on wildlife, especially in steppe habitats where the few trees provide crucial habitat for many species.

WCS Activities
Conservation of wildlife and of natural landscapes cannot begin without a good understanding of the species that occupy those landscapes. Work in Kazakhstan started with research into the basic ecology and conservation of species. While those studies continue, they have also spawned landscape-oriented conservation projects. The following projects in Kazakhstan are conducted in collaboration with the National Aviary.

• Conservation and Ecology of Eagles at the Naurzum National Nature Reserve: In 2000 WCS began funding research into the ecology and conservation of a community of eagles at the Naurzum National Nature Reserve. The Naurzum supports about 25 species of breeding raptors and is probably the only place on earth where white-tailed sea, eastern imperial, golden, and steppe eagles all coexist. Furthermore, the reserve supports the world's highest breeding density of imperial eagles. Our studies began by focusing on evaluating the coexistence of all four species. It has since moved into more demographically-based work whose goal is to identify mortality rates of birds, their causes, and their relevance to the stability of these populations.
  
  
• Demography of vultures in south-eastern Kazakhstan: In South Asia, vulture populations have declined so sharply that there is the threat that 3 species will soon go extinct in the wild. This is especially shocking because one of these species, the Indian white-rumped vulture, was once the most numerous raptor in the world with a population size of 10 to 40 million individuals. In Central Asia, close relatives of the Indian birds, the Eurasian and Himalayan griffon vultures, live at much lower population densities. However, in concert with the economic change in the region, their populations also appear to have declined quickly. WCS's work with these species is designed to evaluate their conservation status in this region, through both traditional colony-based monitoring and development of novel monitoring techniques.

Important Next Steps
Work to date has laid the framework for a new stage of research and conservation in Kazakhstan, as follows:

• The eagle project continues to grow and has started to produce surprising results. We have recently produced survivorship estimates for the entire population of imperial eagles; this is one of the first times that accurate estimates of adult survivorship have been produced for any large eagle. We plan to expand this monitoring program to evaluate subadults and address the problem of subadult behavior and survivorship - a question that is almost never adequately addressed for any raptor species.
  
  
• Our vulture project is also expanding. Although we have laid the framework for traditional vulture population monitoring, this approach is not sufficient to understand population trends. Therefore, we are developing novel and cutting-edge approaches to estimate population size of vultures here, as well as in the Republic of Georgia and in Cambodia.
  
  
• In north Kazakhstan we are initiating the development of an international biological research station that we will be a center for research, conservation and education in the region.