Water buf­fa­lo have not been seen as wild ani­mals in Europe for over 100,000 years. From the dis­tant epoch before the last ice age there is evi­dence of the now extinct Euro­pean water buf­fa­lo (Bubalus mur­ren­sis) from the Mediter­ranean and the Rhine Valley.

After the last ice age, water buf­fa­lo were found in large parts of South and South­east Asia, per­haps also in Mesopotamia. Today there are only small remain­ing pop­u­la­tions of these wild ani­mals in India, Bhutan, Nepal and Thailand.

Over 5,000 years ago, water buf­fa­lo were domes­ti­cat­ed in at least two dif­fer­ent loca­tions, India and south­ern Chi­na. Their descen­dants, the domes­tic water buf­fa­lo, are now kept in large areas of South Asia and in north­ern South Amer­i­ca. Domes­tic water buf­fa­lo also live in Europe. They were intro­duced in the ear­ly Mid­dle Ages, around 1,300 years ago. The domes­tic buf­fa­lo liv­ing in Europe are descend­ed from the Indi­an buf­fa­lo. They are main­ly found in the Balka­ns and Italy. There they deliv­er the milk for the pop­u­lar moz­zarel­la cheese.

Water buf­fa­lo are fru­gal ani­mals. You can use for­age of low­er qual­i­ty than the domes­tic cat­tle that we nor­mal­ly use. Above all, how­ev­er, they can devel­op habi­tats that domes­tic cat­tle would avoid: wet­lands, swampy ter­rain, bog areas. Water buf­fa­lo are good at swim­ming and like to be around and in the water. They are sen­si­tive to heat because they only have a small num­ber of sweat glands. Buf­fa­lo cows can give birth and raise their calves health­ily in the pas­ture when there is snow. Bulls can weigh up to 1,000 kg, cows can weigh up to 700 kg.

In the nation­al park, water buf­fa­lo are not released into the wild or kept as a sub­sti­tute for the wild form that has long been extinct. Wher­ev­er they graze they replace domes­tic cat­tle. Parts of the nation­al park must con­tin­ue to be man­aged. In this way, the land­scape is kept open and struc­tured. Habi­tats for dif­fer­ent species are there­by kept free or cre­at­ed. Whether this works bet­ter with water buf­fa­lo than with the cat­tle kept oth­er­wise is to be test­ed here.

The Wolf­gang Dehn­ert farm from Gartz/Oder keeps a herd of around 100 water buf­fa­lo on the grass­land between Friedrich­sthal and Gartz/Oder.

You can usu­al­ly find the water buf­fa­lo herd in the Friedrich­sthaler Pold­er (5/6), east of Bun­desstraße 2 between Friedrich­sthal and Gartz/Oder (see map). In sum­mer, the ani­mals are also kept in the Fid­di­chow­er Pold­er (10), i.e. in the pold­er between the Hohen­saat­en-Friedrich­sthaler Wasser­straße and the Strom or at dif­fer­ent locations.