African buffalo are highly social bovids whose welfare within protected areas is shaped by predation pressure, disease, drought, and management interventions including culling and translocation.
Buffalo welfare in protected areas reflects the tension between conservation management goals and individual animal wellbeing. Culling to maintain population density within habitat carrying capacity reduces starvation risk at the cost of shooting individual animals, often in distressing conditions for nearby herd members. Disease management through removal of tuberculosis-positive animals similarly trades individual welfare for population health. Translocation can cause significant stress and injury. The welfare cost of these management interventions must be weighed against the suffering that results from unmanaged disease and starvation in overcrowded reserves.