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Breeding and hunting disease-free buffalo will bring major opportunities to Namibia’s livestock, wildlife and tourism industries, a South African professional hunter says.
Wiaan van der Linde, owner and operator of Wintershoek Safaris in South Africa, made these remarks recently at a Namibian wildlife ranching information day.
In South Africa, where buffalo farming has become a lucrative business, wildlife farms in Namibia have been banned from raising buffalo for fear of spreading disease.
Highly profitable
Van der Linde noted that the average price of a disease-free buffalo in 2004 was nearly 150,000 Namibian dollars, and prices have been rising 29% each year due to increased demand.
In 2012, a female buffalo and her calf were sold for N$20 million, while a male buffalo fetched a record N$26 million.
“These projects demonstrate the success of breeding African buffalo in a unique commercial system and maintaining the ‘wildness’ of the animals so they can be effectively released into the wild with few if any behavioural problems,” he said.
Restrictions in Namibia
Buffalo hunting in Namibia is restricted to hunting concessions in the Zambezi region.
Namibia’s Waterberg National Park also has disease-free buffalo.
Van der Linde said perceptions of buffalo were a major reason why there was still a lack of buffalo on Namibian farms.
“Namibia has a huge opportunity with buffalo if it follows South Africa’s example. In 1990, the first buffalo in South Africa was found to have bovine tuberculosis and the disease-free project was launched. They successfully bred disease-free buffalo from the diseased herd in Kruger National Park. You can do the same here.”
Van der Linde noted that this could make Namibia and its hunting industry one of the hottest buffalo hunting destinations in Africa, as buffalo is a highly sought-after animal.
“Any tourist values it and there is no doubt that Namibia is a more popular destination than South Africa, but there is one thing the country lacks and that is buffalo.”
He stressed that the opportunity was huge and the risk was low.
“You can control the risks associated with buffalo, but the hardest thing about buffalo — and I’m not sure you can control it — is perception.”
In South Africa, the government has supported a number of disease-free buffalo breeding projects since 1996, with the aim of repopulating areas where buffalo populations no longer exist or have disappeared due to disease or exclusion by cattle farmers.
Buffaloes are known carriers of foot-and-mouth disease, bovine tuberculosis, corridor disease, and brucellosis.
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