Asian Wild Water-Buffalo (Bubalus arnee)

[Jimmy]

(01-22-2018, 02:12 PM)parvez Wrote: That's good to hear @Jimmy . There are considerable number of wild buffaloes in Nepal and hopefully not inbred. And even in kaziranga there is lot of scope for wild buffalo because they are huge and can't necessarily mate with smaller females as I heard of a recent death of a female rhino due to huge size of male rhino in captivity. But the problem of inbreeding needs to be solved in the future for the good of this animal. Btw which do you think is stronger pound for pound water buffalo or gaur?

At this moment and to be honest i dont really care if they are crossbred-if they are atlest 90% wild it's fine for me. IUCN says it's possible there are no pure buffaloes left in the wild. And in some countries even domestic ones are almost pure wild so it's pretty complicated. Imagine the logistics trying to separate each crossbred ones with pure ones-it's next to impossible. But general opinion i get is that wild ones will out-compete domestic ones in a strict protected reserve provided the land is not overwhelmed by domestic herds outnumbering the wildlife, in that case it will be total chaos. But i now imagine this species at an ecosystem level, grassland is never the same without this major species. imagine what the wetlands, floodplain dynamics will be without it and rhinos etc. regarding future the two population in central India and Nepal maybe cross bred for the diversity and as they are from the same subspecies. but i dont' know if it's possible wild water buffaloes aren't deemed charismatic enough and doesn't draw huge funding i am afraid. but lets hope for the best.
The last one, i really think wild water buffaloes are pound for pound the strongest, dont know exactly why but taking an example of domestic buffalo and a domestic cattle, people use buffalo as tractors for plowing their field in the case cattle fails to do it. I have also seen buffaloes move so easily while cattle struggle to move. So, in this very practical case, buffaloes are taken as a more powerful beast. Thats my view. people often fail to see how thick buffaloe's limbs are, they are massive.

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here is a nepali documentary on translocation of wild buffaloes, i dont think it's understandable but some juveniles were caught with ropes on foot, pretty unusual. Skip the first 3:3o minute... the real chase starts from 15:30

another documentary on Nepal's buffaloes, very big herd at 13:15

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