: Assam’s wild water buffalo is in troubled waters because of habitat loss #IndiaNEWS Describing the abundance of the wild water buffalo (Bubalus arnee) in Assam in his memoir Travels and Adventures

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Assam’s wild water buffalo is in troubled waters because of habitat loss #IndiaNEWS
Describing the abundance of the wild water buffalo (Bubalus arnee) in Assam in his memoir Travels and Adventures in the Province of Assam (1855), Major John Butler, a British colonial military officer and sportsman, noted that during his stay in the province in mid-19th century he would frequently meet with large herds of hundreds of wild water buffaloes in lower and central Assam and it was not uncommon for three or four European sportsmen to shoot 30 buffaloes in one day’s sport. About one and a half-century later, hunted to the brink of near-extinction, the species is listed as endangered in the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List since 1986.A 2010 study estimated the global population of the wild water buffalo at 3,400, of which 3,100 (91%) live in the forests of Assam and the rest are scattered in the Indian states of Chhattisgarh (where it is the state animal) and Arunachal Pradesh, as well as Nepal, Bhutan, Thailand and Cambodia. In Assam, the species now faces a new suite of threats. While interbreeding with domestic buffaloes is commonly identified as one of the key factors contributing to the decline of wild water buffalo populations across habitats, conservationists and experts say that, in Assam, the...Read more

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