Gazelle Risks Its Life To Cross This Railway | The Making of Asia | BBC Earth

Some gazelles decide to run the gauntlet and take their chances, but it's risky. The barbed wire can turn from a painful barrier into a deadly trap. The BBC film crew are in Mongolia and heading out into a freezing and barren wasteland, the Mongolian Steppe. Once part of the vast empire of Genghis Khan, it is part of the largest grassland on earth. The crew are here to film a nomadic animal that gathers here in vast numbers, but this is a tough place to work. We've just arrived at the new base camp. They're still building, as you can see, and it's quite amazing. These whole structures get thrown up in about an hour and they're all insulated against the minus 30 weather and whatnot. This is where we're staying. The crew's target is the Mongolian gazelle, but finding them in such a vast wilderness isn't going to be easy. Gazelles could be anywhere across the steppe and it's a massive wide open space, so a really good way to find them is to get the drone up and get it from there. They also run so fast and go cover such a large distance that oftentimes the only way to keep up with them is with the drone. The first thing the drone reveals is a great scar cutting through the grassland. The Trans-Siberian Railway, fenced in on both sides for hundreds of miles. This fence was built around 1950 and the main purpose of this barbed wire fences was to keep animals, especially livestock, out of the railway because there is a risk of collision with the train. This razor-sharp barbed wire poses a problem for the Mongolian gazelle, which has had its migration route cut in two. Miga is a scientist researching the problem. The migration is halted. Mongolia used to have millions and millions of gazelles that used to cover the whole steppe, but now the population is declining. This divide in the gazelle's habitat is known as habitat fragmentation, and in this case it means that many gazelles will not find the food they need and starve. Some gazelles decide to take their chances and run the gauntlet, but it's risky. The barbed wire can turn from a painful barrier into a deadly trap. There was one fence maintainer who informed us that one winter he saw 3,000 dead animals along the fence when he was maintaining the fence. It's a senseless death, isn't it? You know, it's horrible to see, to be honest. Every animal we film, every shoot we go on, we always build up like a kind of a strong bond through because there's so much time and energy put into filming them. To see something like this just is, it's pretty heartbreaking. The best solution is just to remove the fences so animals can freely go over the railway. Making gaps in the fence has proven to be successful, allowing the migration to continue. But with the potential for livestock to wander in front of trains, it's not a perfect solution. Scientists here are now testing a new approach, which has the potential to save many lives whilst keeping the livestock off the railway line. The one you can see behind me is redesigned fence. So the redesigned fence, no spikes on the bottom one and the top one, so animals can jump over it or go under it without hurting themselves. For two years of period of time, we didn't find any dead animal on these fences. Despite this redesigned fence showing initial signs of success, it's still being studied. But it could prove to be a simple solution that keeps livestock safe while also allowing the migration of the Mongolian gazelle to continue. If it proves effective, the new fence could allow this beautiful species to survive or even thrive alongside the presence of humanity.