Serengeti National Park
THE world-famous Serengeti National Park, is the second largest park in Tanzania, occupying about 14,763 sq kms. The park’s name Serengeti means endless plains and is derived from the Maasai word siringiti. The Park lies in a high plateau between the Ngorongoro highlands and the Kenya/Tanzania border, and extends almost to Lake Victoria. The park encompasses the main part of the Serengeti ecosystem. In 1950 the Serengeti was gazetted and in 1951 it became a national park.
The most famous features of the Serengeti ecosystem are the spectacular concentration of animals found nowhere else in the world, and the annual wildebeest migration. This spectacle sees more than one million wildebeest, 200,000 zebras and 300,000 Thomson’s gazelles trek to new grazing lands. The brief population explosion of wildebeest produces over 8,000 calves a day before the migration starts.
Throughout the world, it is rare for animal migrations to be completed undisturbed and it is an important conservation achievement that the Tanzanian government has protected this wilderness area and allowed the wildebeest to migrate
freely.
As in all ecosystems the vegetation and types of animals you find are closely correlated. The principal features of the park are the short and long grass open plains in the southeast, the acacia savannah in the central area, the hilly, more densely wooded northern section, and the extensive woodland and black clay plains, dominated by the central ranges of mountains in the western corridor.
Best time to visit
For the wildebeest migration Dec-July, for predators June-October.
Access
From Arusha you will pass through the entrance to Lake Manyara National Park and through the Ngorongoro Conservation area, the village in the heart of Serengeti is 335 km from Arusha. Approaching from Mwanza and Musoma you take the road east and you will enter Serengeti through Ndaraka Gate in the West. There are charter flights from Arusha, Lake Manyara and Mwanza.
Birdlife
Nearly 500 species of birds have been recorded in the park, some of them Eurasian migrants which are present from October to April.
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August 3rd, 2009 12:40 am
[...] 167 sq km, at between 1500 and 2100m above sea level. It’s an extension of Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park and is administered by the local country councils. It is probably the most famous and most visited [...]