African buffalo face welfare challenges from bovine tuberculosis management, trophy hunting, and conflict with livestock farming. Their welfare requires balancing conservation and community needs.
African buffalo welfare is complicated by their disease reservoir status. Bovine tuberculosis causes chronic lung disease and wasting in individual buffalo, causing significant suffering before death. Mass culling programmes to control bTB — practised historically in areas like the Kruger National Park — caused enormous welfare harm with uncertain disease control benefits. Selective culling of bTB-positive individuals is more targeted but still involves difficult welfare trade-offs. Trophy hunting of buffalo, when poorly regulated, results in wounded animals escaping wounded and dying slowly. Well-regulated hunting with mandatory follow-up and rapid killing of wounded animals has lower welfare costs. Vaccination programmes using aerosol delivery are being developed and offer a path to disease management without lethal culling.