About Serengeti National Park
The Serengeti National Park is a Tanzanian national park in the Serengeti ecosystem in the Mara and Simiyu regions. It is now both a world biosphere reserve and a world heritage site. The Park if famous for its annual wildebeest migration .The migratory – and some resident – wildebeest, which number over 1.5 million individuals, constitute the largest population of big mammals that still roam the planet.
They are joined in their journey through the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem by 200,000 plains zebras, 300,000 Thomson’s gazelle sand Grant’s gazelle, and tens of thousands of topi and Coke’s hartebeest. Masai giraffe, waterbuck, impala, common warthogs and hippopotamus are also abundant.
No visit to Tanzania would be complete without an excursion to the famed Serengeti National Park. It is from here that massive concentrations of wildebeest, zebras and other animals commence the annual Great Migration in search of pastures new, providing one of the greatest natural spectacles to be found anywhere in the world.
The Serengeti is Tanzania’s oldest and most popular national park. Its name means ‘endless plain’ in the Masai language. Paying a visit you can watch golden-maned lions stalking the migrating herds, spot leopards at rest in trees at dusk and take a hot-air balloon tour at dawn as the sun’s golden rays illuminate the land.
These normally arid plains take on a whole new aspect after the annual rains, at which time they are transformed into a vast rolling carpet of green which stretches away towards every horizon.
Animal life in the Serengeti is always on the move, which is why some of the camps are mobile, moving to follow the concentrations of game as their numbers ebb and flow over the seasons.
The Serengeti ecosystem is, in fact, a continuation of Kenya’s Masai Mara – the migrating animals are not concerned what we humans call each country! The park also borders the Norongoro Conservation Area to the southeast and the so-called ‘western corridor’, along which the animals migrate comes within 8 kilometers of Lake Victoria.
