Water buffalo and cattle ranching in the Lower Amazon Basin: Comparisons and conflicts

From 1975 to 2000, the water buffalo population in the Brazilian Amazon increased at nearly 13% per year, making it one of the fastest growing herds in the world. On the floodplains of the Amazon River buffalo are managed in a similar manner to cattle, but often earn superior production figures. This production advantage, however, is tempered by the role buffalo play in conflicts between landowners; buffalo are prone to altering the floodplain environment and interfering with production activities such as fishing and farming. In this research, we show that buffalo are kept on the floodplains 24% longer than cattle throughout the year, and 37% longer than cattle during periods when landowner conflicts are most likely to occur. We also show that buffalo productivity is greater than cattle in this system, which gives an opportunity to design management regimes for buffalo that may increase production costs, but that will lower the environmental and social problems that involve buffalo. Specifically, when the waters begin to rise, buffalo should be removed from the floodplains at the same time as cattle. Although this will not lessen the damage done while the buffalo is on the floodplain, it will place buffalo on the floodplain during the dry season when the erosion potential is at its lowest, and reduce the time that buffalo may interfere with other production activities such as fishing. The additional production costs incurred by early removal will not dissipate the production advantage over cattle. Without specific management that addresses the socio-economic and environmental problems caused by buffalo, the continued high growth rate for the buffalo population on the Amazon floodplains may not be sustainable and conflicts will become commonplace.