Kazakh semi-desert ("Ovis ammon collium"), goitered gazelle ("Gazella subgutterosa"), Pallas's cat ("Otocolobus manul"), gray wolf ("Canis lupus"), European badger ("Meles meles") and marbled polecat ("Vormela peregusna"). Przewalski's horse ("Equus ferus przewalskii") is native to the ecoregion, but has not been seen in it since 1968. Avian species include the common crane ("Grus grus"), demoiselle crane ("Anthropoides virgo"), red-headed bunting ("Emberiza bruniceps"), larks ("Alaudidae"), wheatears ("Oenanthe"), pipits ("Anthus" spp.), black-bellied sandgrouse ("Pterocles orientalis"), Pallas’s sandgrouse ("Syrrhaptes paradoxus"), steppe eagle ("Aquila rapax"), golden eagle ("Aquila chrysaetos"), peregrine falcon ("Falco peregrinus") and the saker falcon ("Falco cherrug"). Agriculture, overgrazing, and fragmentation of habitat from human
River Meles in Buca and with Kemer Brook flowing through İzmir's neighboring district of Konak before reaching the sea, these two localities are particularly insistent in their claims for associating Meles with the westernmost stream, for understandable reasons. A third candidate takes as basis an anonymous Homeric hymn of unknown date to Artemis which relates that the goddess, "having watered her horses in deep-reeded Meles, drove swiftly through Smyrna to Klaros rich in vines". It has been argued that, if the hymn refers to old Smyrna in its northeastern corner of the Gulf, and if the goddess came to Meles before she