Police unit that rides buffaloes to patrol the Amazon

In the Brazilian state of Pará, buffaloes have become the police’s best allies when patrolling the region’s rivers and swampy territories.

Police unit that rides buffaloes to patrol the Amazon

While at first glance a buffalo may seem a somewhat unusual choice as a mount for a police force, these draught animals possess an excellent natural ability to cross the rivers and swampy territories that surround the small towns and villages scattered around the island of Marajó in Pará, a state in northern Brazil.

For this reason, these bovines have become the best allies of the military police in the area when patrolling a region full of swamps, flooded plains, and the intricate delta that emerges from the Amazon River.

These buffaloes, originally from Southeast Asia and called water buffaloes due to the fact that in the wild they generally graze in areas close to different bodies of water, especially rivers, have spread practically all over the world.

Brazil is one such region where they have thrived to the point of becoming numerous, with an estimated 1.6 million head throughout Brazil.

In this photograph taken by Fernando Sette we see two policemen patrolling the streets. However, it is in the swampy terrain that the buffalo’s true usefulness becomes evident.

Although they began to be used by the military police on the island of Marajó, their use is increasingly expanding to other police forces near the Amazon River and its delta, both because of the effectiveness of these animals in moving at a constant speed through the flooded and swampy territories and because the Brazilian government sees them as a good publicity strategy to clean up its image. The latter due to the positive impact generated in social networks by the photographs taken by tourists with them.

The island of Marajó has more than 380,000 inhabitants and is a delta full of lagoons, rivers and streams. The plains of this Brazilian ecoregion are regularly flooded with the tides and the endless rivers and streams produced by the intricate delta that emerges from the Amazon River make its circulation very difficult and tedious, especially during the rainy season.

The buffalo patrols have not only proven to be effective in traversing the aforementioned territories, but these curious patrols have also become a hit on Brazil’s social networks.