African Buffalo Production Systems

Abstract

Before the eighteenth century, the African buffalo Syncerus caffer was widespread and abundant in Africa (Furstenburg, 2015). Across the African continent, humans had used buffalo for millennia, well before domestic cattle were introduced, as a source of meat and co-products such as hides. The meat from buffalo and other game was the product of hunting, including trapping and even kleptoparasitism. Unfortunately, the use of buffalo has not always been sustainable, in particular since European explorers and settlers arrived with their guns (Chapter 12). In more modern times, human population growth, associated agricultural encroachment and modern weaponry has greatly impacted the conservation status of the African buffalo across its continental range, reducing its natural habitat and population size. In southern Africa especially, culling by white settlers from the 1650s to 1800s had a major impact. The great rinderpest epidemic of the 1890s spread south across the continent, further reducing the remaining buffalo population while also eradicating large numbers of other wildlife. This compounded the earlier impacts on the geographic distribution, population size, structure of herds, migration patterns, and hence production of buffalo.Buffalo are asymptomatic carriers of SAT serotypes of foot-andmouth disease (FMD), various species of Theileria causing East Coast fever, corridor disease and January disease, as well as tsetse-transmitted nagana (Chapter 9). To control and prevent the spread of these diseases to domestic stock, veterinary fences to control the movement of buffalo, other disease carriers and susceptible animals consequently have been used in southern Africa. This has had a further dramatic impact on the buffalo's range and numbers (Oberem and Oberem,