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AFor most of the twentieth century, the Caspian seal was treated as an inexhaustibleresource. Hunters returning to the rookeries on the northern ice each spring routinely killed tens of thousands of pups, and seal oil filled rail cars bound for inland cities. Few people thought it possible that the species — the only marine mammal in the world's largest lake — might one day be at risk.

BThe collapse, when it came, was nevertheless abrupt. Between 1985 and 2005 the Caspian seal population fell by roughly ninety percent, and the ice fields where it had given birth for thousands of generations began to thin and break apart earlier each winter. Industrial pollution, bycatch from sturgeon nets, and a creeping warming of the basin combined to do in two decades what hunters had failed to do in a hundred and fifty years.

CRecent counts, however, suggest something unexpected: the seals are returning. Survey teams working out of Aktau and Mahaçqala reported a modest but consistent increase across each of the last six breeding seasons. The reasons are not yet fully understood. Some researchers credit a series of unusually cold winters; others point to stricter enforcement of the fishing quota agreed to by the five littoral states in 2018.

DWhatever the cause, the recovery remains fragile. A single warm winter, biologists warn, could erase several years of gains. For now, the rookeries are quieter than they have been for half a century — not silent, but no longer the scene of slaughter that defined them for so long.