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16 - Buffalo Hunting: From a Commodity to a High-Value Game Species
- from Part IV - Management
- Edited by Alexandre Caron, Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD), France, Daniel Cornélis, Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD) and Foundation François Sommer, France, Philippe Chardonnet, International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) SSC Antelope Specialist Group, Herbert H. T. Prins, Wageningen Universiteit, The Netherlands
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- Book:
- Ecology and Management of the African Buffalo
- Published online:
- 09 November 2023
- Print publication:
- 23 November 2023, pp 431-484
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Summary
Whether practiced legally or illegally, formally or informally, hunting buffalo for meat occurs broadly across African cultures. Nearly all buffalo parts are prized in addition to the meat. Buffalo are also hunted for traditional medicine, social positioning, mystical reasons and in retaliation for causing damage to people and crops. The buffalo is a major game for the hunting industry in every country, but the reasons vary from place to place. In South Africa, buffalo is the first income-generating game despite being the least hunted of all important game. In Tanzania, despite a trophy fee that is lower than that of other species, buffalo is the top tax-earning game because it is the most hunted among the important game. As duly gazetted protected areas, hunting areas are contributing internationally to the global network of conservation areas. They more than double the land area that is used for wildlife conservation in sub-Saharan Africa. Acting as buffer zones of national parks and as corridors between national parks, hunting areas are the last frontier of the African buffalo outside national parks. In South Africa, where all buffalo are fenced and buffalo hunting occurs behind fences, the buffalo is subject to genetic manipulation to enlarge trophy horns and produce disease-free herds. While ‘clean buffalo’ widely contributed to expanding the land dedicated to wildlife conservation in a beef-exporting country, ‘augmented buffalo’ remain a matter of concern for the long-term conservation of the taxon. Several non-African countries imposed bans on importing hunting trophies of CITES-listed species from Africa, leading to a drop in the hunting market. The bans are having two impacts on buffalo: (i) although not CITES-listed, the buffalo is a collateral victim of the bans because many abandoned hunting areas are exposed to poaching and habitat conversion; and (ii) unintentionally, the bans are lifting the value of buffalo as a leading flagship game in an attempt to compensate for the loss of CITES-listed game. Hence, once a commodity game, the buffalo is turning into a high-value game.
4 - Conservation Status of the African Buffalo: A Continent-Wide Assessment
- from Part I - Conservation
- Edited by Alexandre Caron, Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD), France, Daniel Cornélis, Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD) and Foundation François Sommer, France, Philippe Chardonnet, International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) SSC Antelope Specialist Group, Herbert H. T. Prins, Wageningen Universiteit, The Netherlands
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- Book:
- Ecology and Management of the African Buffalo
- Published online:
- 09 November 2023
- Print publication:
- 23 November 2023, pp 66-128
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Summary
This chapter presents the distribution, abundance patterns and trends of African buffalo in the 38 countries of its distribution area based on recent aerial and ground census data and feedback from field experts. For the period 2001–2021, we collected abundance data from 163 protected areas or complexes of protected areas and presence data from 711 localities. The savanna buffalo population is estimated in 2022 at over 564,000 individuals, after deduction of the 75,000 buffalo under intensive private management in South Africa. Its abundance is roughly equivalent to that estimated 25 years ago (625,000). The subspecies conservation status is highly unbalanced. The Cape buffalo is by far the most abundant, representing 90 per cent of the total estimated population (510,000 individuals). The West and Central subspecies respectively represent 4 and 6 per cent (>20,000 individuals and >34,000 individuals). The conservation status of the Central African savanna buffalo, whose abundance has been nearly halved over the last 25 years, is worrisome, with exception of the steadily increasing populations of Zakouma NP (Chad) and Garamba NP (DRC). Estimating the abundance of forest buffalo is challenging, as is establishing a trend. Our investigations showed that the forest buffalo is still well represented in Central Africa in areas with low human density. The forest buffalo’s most important stronghold in Central Africa is probably the Greater TRIDOM/TNS (Tri-National Dja-Odzala-Minkébé / Trinational Sangha), a vast contiguous block of mainly pristine moist forest covering 250,000 km2 and straddling Cameroon, Congo, Gabon and Central African Republic (11 per cent of the Central African forest block). In West Africa, we obtained very little information on the presence of the forest buffalo in the residual forest block, suggesting that the conservation status of the forest buffalo in this region is very worrisome.