Before the break-up of the USSR, the border areas of the present-day Russian Trans-Volga region were part of the continuous range of the Volga-Ural saiga population. This includes the northern part of the Lower Trans-Volga area, where saigas summer and calve, as well as the Baskunchak lake area where saigas spend the winter. In the second half of the 1990s, saiga numbers catastrophically declined and their range shrank significantly.