Lindsay Hunt is a South African hunter turned conservationist who played an important role in a project to produce Cape buffalo breeding stock free of

bovine tuberculosis Bovines ( subfamily Bovinae) comprise a diverse group of 10 genera of medium to large-sized ungulates, including cattle, bison, African buffalo, water buffalos, and the four-horned and spiral-horned antelopes. The evolutionary relationship betw ...

and

foot-and-mouth disease Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) or hoof-and-mouth disease (HMD) is an infectious and sometimes fatal viral disease that affects cloven-hoofed animals, including domestic and wild bovids. The virus causes a high fever lasting two to six days, followe ...

. The project has established disease-free herds in all nine provinces of South Africa, away from the TB-ravaged areas of the

Kruger National Park Kruger National Park is a South African National Park and one of the largest game reserves in Africa. It covers an area of in the provinces of Limpopo and Mpumalanga in northeastern South Africa, and extends from north to south and from ea ...

. Discovered in 1990, buffalo bovine tuberculosis is an airborne bacterial disease. Infected buffalo may carry the disease for long periods, becoming emaciated and eventually succumbing to predation. Tuberculosis has had a devastating effect on wild buffalo herds, crossing the species barrier and widely contaminating predators, scavengers and herbivores, such as lion, leopard, cheetah, baboon, kudu, eland, bongo, oryx, sable antelope and waterbuck. Bovine tuberculosis, first reported in South Africa in 1880 in domestic cattle and in 1928 in wildlife in the

Eastern Cape The Eastern Cape is one of the provinces of South Africa. Its capital is Bhisho, but its two largest cities are East London and Gqeberha. The second largest province in the country (at 168,966 km2) after Northern Cape, it was formed in ...

, probably arrived with European settlers and their livestock. The

South African National Parks South African National Parks (SANParks) is the body responsible for managing South Africa's national parks. SANParks was formed in 1926, and currently manages 19 parks consisting of , over 3% of the total area of South Africa. Many parks offer ...

Board felt the only practical solution to the epidemic was to breed disease-free buffalo. Hunt sourced his first buffalo breeding stock from the gene pool of the Kruger Park and developed systems that have been acclaimed in wildlife management circles.AVIVA

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References

External links

YouTube video on Lindsay HuntThe man who brought buffalo back to the CapeBlack gold: disease-free buffalo farming (Farmer's Weekly)
see: Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom special Buffalo Warrior. South African conservationists Year of birth missing (living people) Living people {{environmentalist-stub