14 DAY TRIAL // Experts are puzzled at one of the strangest natural occurrences of the last few years. On the Mongolian steppes, the most massive herd of roaming animals ever has been reported. Numbering an estimated quarter of a million, the Mongolian gazelles (Procapra gutturosa) have been occupying an immense stretch of land, in what is currently one of the last places on Earth able to fit such a “gathering” without human interference. Experts from the University of Massachusetts, in the US, and the Smithsonian Institute have been behind the amazing find, and have been themselves stunned to see the large herd from a nearby hill.
Publishing details of the herd in the scientific journal Oryx, UM expert Kirk Olson, the leader of the US research team, said that the sight was, indeed, one to behold. “It was stunning. I don't know if I was surprised or simply blown away by what we came across,” he said, quoted by the BBC News. The discovery was made in the fall of 2007, after a very severe drought had pushed all of the nomadic creatures from their widespread pastures to a single region. The area had received precipitations, as opposed to the others, and was also uninhabited, so it offered the perfect refuge.
Olson added that, as he and the team were driving through the landscape, occasionally catching a gazelle and tagging it with a GPS receiver, they started encountering herds that numbered thousands of individuals. “Groups of this size are impressive and beautiful to see,” he explained, saying that, the next day, they found what appeared to them as another such herd. But the reality couldn't be further from the truth. “But it was really one edge of a group that ended up being over 250,000 by one estimate. We were simply amazed at the sight. The image I have in my mind of seeing this massive aggregation of gazelles will always be etched into my memory.”
“I expected that we would come across gazelles at times in large and impressive numbers. But not a couple hundred thousand in one sweep across the horizon. I had never seen that many before and that many had never been documented. The fact that bit of suitable habitat exists and the gazelles were able to access this during an extremely dry summer is at present good news. It means the steppe is still intact.” the UM expert shared.
“Eastern Mongolia is arguably one of the best remaining examples of an ecologically complete grassland in the world. The Mongolian gazelles are the largest remaining population of wild ungulate remaining in Central Asia. What will seal the fate for the gazelles is if their habitat is degraded and fragmented to a point where the large herds that exist today no longer have a place to go, and then they will be lost,” he concluded.