Brooke Barkla at the Berrimah Export Yards in Darwin. Feeder buffalo being prepared for live export. Wild caught feeder buffalo calm down very quickly, travel well on livestock vessels and perform almost as well as cattle in Asian feedlots.
TOWARDS the end of the Brucellosis and Tuberculosis Eradication Campaign (BTEC) in the early 1990s a small group of buffalo in Arnhem Land were identified as being free of disease.
This disease-free status was monitored and double checked exhaustively until the mid 1990s when an estimated 40,000 head of disease-free buffalo were left alone to re-populate.
Thirty years later the descendants of this buffalo herd are reproducing at an alarming rate with current population estimates between 200,000 and 300,000.
About 95 percent of these animals are located in Arnhem Land where road networks are unsealed and totally cut off behind monsoonal river systems for about six months of the year.
Herd numbers have now reached a point where they are resulting in serious environmental damage in some fragile ecosystems such as the Arafura Swamp.
The logical approach is to harvest these animals, however, finding profitable markets for these buffalo presents a challenge.
When a muster is run, all types of animals are captured and need to be removed. The largest males and females are well suited for slaughter at abattoirs. Medium sized males are suitable for live export as “feeders” to be fattened and subsequently slaughtered for meat in Asia. Young animals can be relocated behind wire then either kept as domesticated breeders or sold into the live export trade once they reach a suitable size.
The problem is that the cost of mounting a harvesting operation in Arnhem Land is extremely high. Mustering contractors need to negotiate contracts (Section 19 Land use agreements) with the Traditional Owners (TO’s), move large quantities of equipment into (and back out of) remote areas, make their own roads and sustain themselves far from home for months at a time.
The shortest freight from western Arnhem land to the only suitable abattoir at Batchelor is at least 400km while the locations of highest stock densities are more like 600km or 14 hours away over very poor roads.
An estimated cost for the capture and delivery of larger slaughter buffalo from Arnhem Land to the abattoir at Batchelor is about $400 per head. The royalty payments due to the TO’s is variable depending on the class of stock but averages about $150 per head.
The end result is that the harvester needs a minimum return of about $550 per head delivered to the Batchelor abattoirs just to break even. Given the limited demand for buffalo meat at the present time, this is more than the abattoir can pay in order for them to make a profit.
While the live export market for male buffalo is commercially viable, it is not feasible for the harvesters to only muster medium sized males suited for live export so they can only muster mixed groups of animals including all ages, sizes and sexes. If there is no profitable slaughter market for the larger bulls and cows that are not suitable for live export then the very expensive wild harvest process becomes unviable.
This was the case during 2024 when no significant wild harvest took place. As a result, these very fertile buffalo herds have grown even larger and the damage they are doing increases.
The only alternative to commercial harvest is shooting to waste. This has already been utilised in limited areas where the exploding numbers are already causing serious problems with Australian taxpayers footing the bill. Cost estimates for shooting to waste are in the order of $50 to $120 per head with funding from either the federal government or directly from indigenous ranger groups. When animals are shot to waste there is no royalty paid to the TO’s.
Using a back of the envelope calculation, a wild herd of say 250,000 buffalo will probably contain a conservative 30pc of productive females with a calving rate of at least 50pc. Using these low-end estimates, a herd of 250,000 will have 75,000 productive cows producing 37,000 new calves per year.
Without removal of females by harvest or shooting to waste, the herd will grow by roughly 40,000 the following year, 46,000 the year after and continue to grow exponentially. No action could see the herd reach in the order of 600,000 by 2030.
Assuming the natural increase in today’s herd is about 37,000 and a conservative cost to shoot to waste (using turbine helicopters) is $70 per head then the annual cost to prevent the herd from getting any larger is about $2.6 million. The shoot to waste cost required to achieve a meaningful reduction in the breeding herd might be in the order of $10 million per year. And this will need to be repeated annually for many years.
Obviously, commercial harvest with a combination of abattoir slaughter, live exports and pastoral management of young stock is the logical and cheapest solution. Except that it is currently not commercially viable but instead is a loss-making proposition for either the harvester or the abattoir or both.
Finding new markets
One option would be to divert some of the federal government funds that might otherwise have to been spent on shooting to waste and use it to find new markets for buffalo beef and potentially subsidise the costs of capture and delivery to make it worthwhile for commercial operations to begin and continue. I can hear the groans already. No way. But unless someone can miraculously come up with a sustainable commercial market for buffalo beef then the tax payer will be footing the massive shoot to waste bill well into the next decade.
There is also potential for an integrated buffalo management approach where target populations are set for different areas and a combination of harvesting and strategic lethal culling is implemented in a planned way. At the present time this is not possible under the current Section 19 land use agreement arrangements.
If commercial harvest is unviable with shooting to waste implemented over vast areas then the only beneficiary of the resulting environmental disaster is the feral pig population.
There is a small abattoir in western Arnhem Land at Oenpelli with large nearby aboriginal communities (Oenpelli, Maningrida and Ramingining with a collective population of about 4000) which could utilise some of these animals if throughput could be expanded.
There is a possibility that the managed removal of buffalo from the environment could become eligible for carbon credits or emerging “nature repair” and biodiversity markets which could then be used to offset harvesting costs but any agreement on these options will take several years at least so for the moment they only represent an optimistic possibility for the medium term.
Large numbers of wild ruminants scattered across the northern Australian coastline also represent an important biosecurity risk now that our neighbours to the north are infected with both Foot and Mouth Disease and Lumpy Skin Disease. Commercial harvest of the buffalo herd would be a significant benefit for exotic disease surveillance programs.
Perhaps there are other solutions that are not immediately obvious.
If anyone has any suggestions that might help to solve this problem then we need to hear about them as soon as possible. This is not a problem just for the residents of Arnhem Land and the Northern Territory buffalo industry but will impact every Australian taxpayer if not addressed quickly and efficiently.
- Ross Ainsworth is currently serving as the executive officer of the NT Buffalo Industry Council.
Why not instead of looking to markets with a need for high demand fresh meat. Instead put the stuff into tins for pets. Surely the billion plus global population of pet owners, that spoil their fur babies half to death with unnecessary mediocrity, could find a need for it. You could either go home brand, intermediate lines or prestige products. Marketing it properly would be key. Instead of looking to someone to sell this item to, and Hope they do the thinking. Thinking has always been the problem, no one in this country wants to be entrepreneurial or creative. If in fact it’s not a bad product, WE could be do our part and put out global awareness that it’s as good as cow and break any stigmas putting road blocks in the way of consumer scepticism.
What are the expectations of these markets? Are we sending off feral animals that have had no hygiene treatment. Or is there a way to get all the medicines into them and beat whp’s after muster, and simply send them off live. You could use all ages, it’s only pet food. And have the dilemma be, let’s market this product that has a 12 month shelf life ‘properly’, and create a sustainable market with out the need for rushing due to fresh food deadlines.
I think that’s the real question, “how do you break down buyers stigma?” Is this a pig getting lip stick put on it, to solve an environmental dilemma? Or, is it a good enough product, that it could compete in a market, relatively free a buyer remorse and scepticism?
If any product is in fact good, and it does get marketed properly, there is no reason or excuse for why it wouldn’t fly off the shelf.
Just some food for thought. If we want something to sell, we’d have to give it a helping hand and “promote” it properly.
We need to fulfil the markets, “why?” Why “this” instead of what they’re already using.
This seems just like when the yanks put the food pyramid together to move on stores of grain that was going rotten. Or the military complex giving opinions on water intake to sell more sports drinks.
It’s a big enough dilemma. You’d have to do this with utmost ethics, no con jobs to move product. What I’d like to know, is what countries have warmed to the stuff already. What data do we have on market receptivity?
Build some where to proses the
meat and hides nearby.
Create jobs for locals
Start a safari business get hunters to
hunt the big bulls (safari has multiple
income streams)
Harvest some live buffalo
Dont look for a 1 fix fix it all
Use many ways to harvest the buffalo
See them as an asset to a problem
There seems to be a demand for buffalo meat in Indonesia.
Is there any possibility of young buffalo being domesticated as a new production system in the Top End where buffalo are exceptionally efficient in protein supply?
Some years ago I was involved with an export program to Quatar. It involved mostly sheep, some cattle, camels and small number of Buffalo. It was an interesting process and the clients were dismayed about hearing of our tendancy to shoot and waste of otherwise useful resource. I realise the distance logistics and harvest costs do limit the use of most products.
However, it seems we may need to contact the potential destination users to see what they require, not “just catch and sell”. The middle east generally imports their labour to do the menial things like construction and servicing and it may be the way of having outside labour (who need a job) to fill the otherwise expensive Australian labour factor.
Food for thought. Andrew Rainsford 0424000337
It’s happening already. Andrew. The red meat processing industry would grind to a halt if it wasn’t for offshore labour. We simply need better access, and more of it. Editor
Its easy solved
Get someone who knows how to run a meat works and market product into the Livingston meat works. Make it a multi-species meatworks and watch it go forward.
There enough cattle, buffalo, donkeys and horses to make it viable as there is good markets for all of this product around the world.
Don’t forget feral camels, Mike. Australia has the world’s largest population, often said to be at least half a million strong. Editor
A better road network would help with cost of freight as well as encouraging more tourism to the area to help the local community build a better future
Take the royalty off. As ato or government has to pay to control the buffalo that brings $550 down to $400 does that make it viable to export
I worked at the abattoir for buffalo.
Germany was a very strong market.
There are markets in Indonesia not only for feedlots if you know where.
A good abattoir set-up could utilise a lot more product than we used to because of a growing Asian presence here in Australia.
There are possibilities for export to Vietnam.
It might be worth trialing a smaller scale abattoir in Arnhem Land closer to the buff population with a view to expanding to three or four to operate each dry season. That way you’d be trucking boxed meat out. There would need to be a win in it for the TO’s, they would have a seasonal settlement popping up on their country which might not suit. It looks pretty challenging.
There were mobile buffalo abattoirs operating in the territory in the 1970s-80s, David. Editor
Arnhem Land is freehold land. Why do the owners of Arnhem not do something themselves to provide income for themselves?
Who was the bright spark that let the 30K head out?
A couple of left field suggestions 1) Sport shooting, 2) use MLA money as they seem to waste plenty.