Serengeti National Park

Serengeti: Home to the great migration.

The Serengeti National Park is a large national park in northern Tanzania covering an area of 14,763 km². It is located east of the Mara region and northeast of the Simiu region and covers more than 1,500,000 hectares of pristine savannah. The park was established in 1940.

Serengeti National Park is a national park and reserve on the Serengeti Plateau in north-central Tanzania. It partially borders Kenya and lies northwest of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. It is best known for its huge herds of plains game (especially wildebeest, gazelles and zebras) and is the only place in Africa where large-scale overland migrations of animals still occur. The park is an international tourist attraction and was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1981.

Serengeti National Park, wildebeest herds
Established in 1951, the park covers an area of 14,763 square kilometers and contains some of the best grasslands in Africa and an extensive acacia savanna. The park, which lies between 920 and 1850 meters above sea level, is located 160 kilometers southeast of the shores of Lake Victoria and 160 kilometers south of the Kenyan-Tanzanian border on the eastern side. Many species of animals in the park migrate along the “western corridor” leading to Lake Victoria. Approximately 1,300,000 wildebeest, 60,000 zebras, 150,000 gazelles and many other animals live in the area. During the rainy season, from November to May, the herds graze on the southeastern plains of the park. In late May or June, large groups migrate westward into the park’s wooded savannah and then northward to the grasslands on the Kenya-Tanzania border known as the Mara (Masai Mara National Reserve). Another group migrates directly north. The herds return to the southeastern plains of the park in November, at the end of the dry season.

In addition to more than 35 species of plains game, there are about 3,000 lions, as well as large numbers of spotted hyenas, leopards, rhinos, hippos, gyrfalcons, cheetahs and baboons. Crocodiles live in the swamps along the Mara River. More than 350 species of birds have also been spotted, including ostriches, vultures and flamingos.

Elephants, which were not present in the Serengeti 30 years ago, were introduced to the park with the increase in human population and the development of agriculture outside the park; the local elephant population is estimated at about 1,360 individuals. The last wild dogs disappeared from the Serengeti in 1991, but there are about 30,000 domestic dogs in the area; it is possible that unvaccinated domestic dogs are spreading rabies among wild dogs, leading to localized extinction. A canine distemper epidemic in 1994 killed almost a third of the lions in the region. A major threat is the killing of elephants for their ivory tusks, the killing of nearly extinct black rhinos for their horns, and poaching for their meat – an estimated 200,000 animals a year.

The first systematic study of the region’s wildlife was conducted in the late 1950s by German zoologist Bernhard Grzimek. The park headquarters is located near the Seronera Wildlife Research Center (founded in 1962 as the Serengeti Research Institute).

 

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