Serengeti: A Perfect Tourist Destination For Any Animal Lover

Tanzania is packed with natural beauty and the opportunity to experience wildlife in a way that you can nowhere else in the world.

Serengeti: A must-visit: First up, it goes without saying that you have to travel to the Serengeti during your trip to Tanzania. Just like Mount Kilimanjaro, the Serengeti is one of the biggest tourist attractions of Tanzania, and it is perfect for any animal lover. These vast plains are home to millions of wildlife, and animals passing through. It is home to the Big Five and a very popular location for game drives.

Second-largest national park: It is also the second-largest national park in Tanzania, and the location of the great wildebeest migration every year. Many people visit Tanzania purely to go on a safari to the Serengeti.

Four main places to visit: Tanzania has four main places to visit.

1. Dar es Salaam is their economic capital.

2. Zanzibar an island near Dar es Salaam.

3. Serengity National Park.

4. Kilimanjaro.

The first two are on the southern side and Serengeti and Kilimanjaro are on the Northern side of Tanzania.

Serengeti National Park

Let the great migration in this dynamic ecosystem move you.

It’s the only place where you can witness millions of migrating wildebeest over the Acacia plains, it’s the cradle of human life, and probably the closest to an untouched African wilderness you will ever get: welcome to Serengeti National Park. Where time seems to stand still, despite the thousands of animals constantly on the move. experience just a small part of this ecosystem will change your vision of our world and the environment. After being overwhelmed by the vibrancy, variety and vastness of this land, this place of transition will leave you changed forever.

History of Serengeti National Park

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, explorers and missionaries described the Serengeti plains and the massive numbers of animals found there. Only minor details are all that were reported before explorations in the late 1920s and early 1930s supply the first references to the great wildebeest migrations, and the first photographs of the region.

 

Sport hunting activities until 1937: An area of 2,286 square kilometres was established in 1930 as a game reserve in what is now southern and eastern Serengeti. They allowed sport hunting activities until 1937, after which it stopped all hunting activities. In 1940 Protected Area Status was conferred to the area and the National Park itself was established in 1951, then covering southern Serengeti and the Ngorongoro highlands. They based the park headquarters on the rim of Ngorongoro crater.

Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA): So, the original Serengeti National Park, as it was gazetted in 1951, also included what now is the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA). In 1959, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area was split off from the Serengeti National Park and they extended the boundaries of the park to the Kenya border. 

The Maasai may live and graze their cattle: The key reason for splitting off the Ngorongoro area was that local Maasai residents realized that they were threatened with eviction and consequently not allowed to graze their cattle within the national park boundaries. To prevent this from happening, protests were staged. A compromise was reached wherein the Ngorongoro Crater Area was split off from the national park: the Maasai may live and graze their cattle in the Ngorongoro Crater area but not within Serengeti National Park boundaries.

Establishment of Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya: In 1961 the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya was established and in 1965 the Lamai Wedge between the Mara River and Kenya border was added to Serengeti National Park, thus creating a permanent corridor allowing the wildebeests to migrate from the Serengeti plains in the south to the Loita Plains in the north. The Maswa Game Reserve was established in 1962 and a small area north of The Grumeti River in the western corridor was added in 1967.

First places to be proposed as a World Heritage Site: The Serengeti National Park was among the first places to be proposed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO at the 1972 Stockholm conference. It was formally established in 1981.

Inputs and photos courtesy: Sunil Nadkarni, Chemical Engineer holding two patents, a Rotarian and Philanthropist settled in Ankaleshwar, Bharuch district of Gujarat.