Monitoring African buffalo (Syncerus caffer) and cattle (Bos taurus) movement across a damaged veterinary control fence at a Southern African wildlife/livestock interface

We test the extent to which fence damage or fence permeability (resulting from human and elephant damage) influences patterns of cattle and buffalo movement at the periphery of Gonarezhou National Park, Zimbabwe. We used spoor data to detect and compare the frequency of cattle and buffalo movement across the fence boundary. Results show that spoor proportions for cattle were significantly higher on fence partially damaged by humans than buffalo spoor. Conversely, buffalo spoor proportions were significantly higher on sections with totally removed fence as a result of elephant damage. Results suggest that cattle and buffalo use different sections of the damaged fence.