African buffalo live in large social herds with complex defensive behavior and social bonds. Their welfare in the wild is affected by habitat loss, disease management, and trophy hunting.
Buffalo welfare is affected by both the direct harms of disease management programs and the indirect welfare costs of habitat loss. Mass culling for tuberculosis control causes significant suffering at scale and raises questions about whether preventive vaccination rather than reactive killing could achieve equivalent disease control at lower welfare cost. Trophy hunting of individual bulls causes death that, in well-regulated hunting operations with experienced hunters, may be rapid, but wounding rates in any hunting context cause additional welfare concerns. Disease surveillance programs that enable targeted individual management rather than mass herd culling represent a welfare improvement for both buffalo and conservation outcomes.