A shaggy antelope of grassland near water.
It has coarse hair and a mane on the neck. Only males have horns, and the coat ranges from gray to reddish brown.
At Nazinga Forest Reserve in southern Burkina Faso, researchers traced waterbuck numbers from records spanning 1985–2019. Counts rose from 1985 to 2005, then declined during 2007–2019. In the detailed 2019 census, adults were the largest age group (46.6%), females outnumbered males five to one, and most animals were seen along larger rivers.
The analysis found no association between poacher activity and distribution. The authors did not identify one cause for the decline; they suggested several possibilities, including increasing aridity and poaching. Their year-based models had low explanatory power. These findings describe Defassa waterbuck in one reserve, not waterbuck across Africa.
IUCN Red List (IUCN SSC Antelope Specialist Group) · Least Concern (LC) · Global
The waterbuck is listed as Least Concern (LC) in the IUCN global assessment, although its population trend is decreasing. The assessment was completed on 7 January 2016 and published that year. A 2025 regional assessment for South Africa, Eswatini and Lesotho listed the Common Waterbuck subspecies as Least Concern with a stable regional trend. In contrast, the Defassa subspecies studied at Nazinga Forest Reserve in Burkina Faso declined during 2007–2019. Researchers proposed several possible causes, including increasing aridity and poaching, but did not identify a single cause. Conservation therefore depends on local population monitoring and attention to riverside grassland, wetlands, and changes in water and forage.