Roadtrip!
Saw these big guys along the road in Kakadu
Feral Water Buffalo’s (Bubalus bubalis)
Near the Wirnwirnmila Mary River Roadhouse, Burrundie NT, Australia 13-12-2023
The history of the water buffalo
The water buffalo were introduced to Australia in the early 1800s, first brought to an island off the coast of the Northern Territory for meat purposes and unlike the Cape Buffalo, were able to be successfully domesticated. After the settlements in the area were abandoned in the mid 1900s, the buffalo the colonised the top of the Northern Territory in permanent to semi-permanent swamps.
In the early 1980s it was estimated that the Northern Territory had approximately 350,000 water buffalo. Although they were largely seen as a feral animal, the buffalo were still utilised for their hides, meat and as live export. In 1982, Tuberculosis was a great concern in Australia and was found the be passed from bovines like cattle and buffalo onto the humans. This concern caused the Government to pass a Policy that allowed for the extensive culling of water buffalo. It was called the Brucellosis and Tuberculosis Eradication Campaign, in which buffalo were culled to minimise the risk to any surrounding cattle or humans of contracting Tuberculosis from buffalo that had the Mycobacterium bovis bacteria.
The cull was was so large that by 2008, 26 years later, the buffalo population still had not recovered to even half what it was in 1982 at just 150,000 buffalo recorded in the NT.
There are two types of water buffalo in Australia, the river buffalo and the swamp buffalo. The river buffalo have curled back horns and are a smaller-bodied sub species, while the swamp buffalo horns grow outward and form more of a semi-circle.
The swamp buffalo are the more hunted of the sub species. The swamp buffalo live in swamps and floodplains across the north of Australia. They are big-bodied and stocky - the males typically stand at around 130 cm (51 in), whereas the females stand at about 124 cm (48 in). Their weight can range from 300-550 kg (660-1210 lbs) but some have been recorded to weigh over 1000 kg (2200 lbs). A swamp buffalo’s horns can reach up to 3.1m (10ft).
(source: HuntShack)
9 сен 2024
