Bovine tuberculosis, an infectious disease mostly confined to cattle but now threatening wildlife around the world, is spreading among buffalo in South Africa’s Kruger National Park, an official said on Wednesday.
Tests confirm more of the famed park’s estimated 32 000 buffalo have contracted the chronic wasting disease. Other animals, including lions, leopards and hyenas, may also be infected through consumption of infected prey.
”It has increased and we have picked up signs of the disease in the north [part of the park],” said Raymond Travers, spokesperson for Kruger, one of the continent’s premier wildlife reserves.
Bovine TB spreads mainly through respiratory secretions and is marked by sharp weight loss and lesions in the lymph nodes and lungs. With no efficient way to treat the disease, farmers are usually forced to quarantine or cull infected livestock.
Protecting deer, bison and other free-range animals from the disease has become a priority in the United States, Canada and elsewhere due to fears that the infection could become uncontrollable, decimating livestock and wildlife alike.
Travers, however, said park officials were not seeing any indications of a decline in Kruger’s buffalo population from the disease, which often takes years to kill infected animals.
Believed to have entered the southern part of the park decades ago through contact with infected cattle, bovine TB has since spread through the nearly two million-hectare reserve, 330km north-east of Johannesburg.
Although humans can contract the disease — normally by eating contaminated dairy products or meat — Travers said there was no realistic threat to the 1,2-million people who visit the park annually.
Founded in 1898, Kruger is the jewel in the crown of South Africa’s system of national parks and home to 147 kinds of wild mammal, including the so-called ”Big 5” — lion, leopard, rhino, buffalo and elephant. – Reuters