Serengeti National Park

IDENTIFICATION: Large national safari park in northern Tanzania, East Africa

The Serengeti National Park provides protection to vast numbers of animal, insect, and plant species. In addition to being a popular tourist destination, the park is active in conservation and research efforts.

The name Serengeti, meaning “endless plain,” derives from the language of the Masai, a seminomadic people native to East Africa who have grazed their cattle on the Serengeti Plain for more than two thousand years. The first European to see the area was Oskar Baumann, an Austrian explorer and cartographer, in 1892. Germany colonized the Serengeti until the end of World War I, when Tanganyika (now Tanzania) became a British protectorate. In 1921 the British designated 324 hectares (800 acres) of the plain as a partial game reserve to protect the lions; this area became a full reserve in 1929.

The British established the whole of the Serengeti as a national park in 1951, before Tanganyika achieved independence. The Masai tribespeople on the plain were relocated to the southeastern portion of the park, in the Ngorongoro highlands. In the 1950s a book on the Serengeti by Bernhard Grzimek, president of the Frankfurt Zoological Society, and a documentary film based on the book that Grzimek wrote and directed brought worldwide attention to the Serengeti National Park. In the early twenty-first century, the Frankfurt Zoological Society works closely with Tanzania’s national park service, providing funding for research, training, and conservation at the Serengeti National Park.

The park is roughly 14,760 square kilometers (5,700 square miles) in area. To the north it borders Kenya, to the west Lake Victoria, and to the east the Great Rift Valley. On the south it is surrounded by the buffer zones of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, set up in 1959, and the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya. Within the park, tourists are accommodated in five lodges, seven tented camps, and a number of camp sites. Administration of the park is centered in Seronera, a small settlement within its boundaries.

The topography of the park is widely varied. The southern and central areas consist of savanna interspersed with rocky outbreaks known as kopjes or koppies. To the west is a corridor of more fertile ground watered by the Grumeti River. To the north are the permanent watercourses of the River Mara in the Lobo area. One of the great sights in the park is the annual migration of millions of wildebeest, joined by some 200,000 zebras and 300,000 Thomson’s gazelles, from south to north, a distance of some 966 kilometers (600 miles), and then their return. Such migrations are attended by many predators: about 4,000 lions, 500 to 600 cheetahs, 7,500 hyenas, and smaller populations of jackals, leopards, and African wild dogs.

In addition to these animals, the park is home to large herds of elephants, buffalo, impalas, giraffes, waterbucks, and other types of gazelles, as well as crocodiles that live in the rivers. The large of black rhinoceros that was once present in the park has been decimated by poaching; the numbers of this species had become dangerously low by the early years of the twenty-first century. Also native to the Serengeti are some five hundred bird species, including the secretary bird, ostrich, and black eagle. At the insect level, species are abundant as well. One hundred varieties of dung beetle have been identified, for example. After the rains, the ground in many parts of the park is carpeted with a wide variety of wildflowers. Owing to the great found there, the Serengeti National Park has been designated a World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Environmental challenges for the park include the comparative fragility of its ecosystems for such large numbers of animals; drought and have posed particular problems. In addition, some conflicts have arisen on the borders of the park because animals from the park have killed the livestock of local herdsmen; also, diseases are sometimes spread between the wild animals of the park and domesticated animals. Efforts to reduce such tensions have included the establishment of four Wildlife Management Areas that encompass some twenty-three villages near the park’s borders.

Bibliography

"Animal Life in Serengeti National Park." Serengeti National Park, 2024, www.serengeti.com/serengeti-animals.php. Accessed 23 July 2024.

Holmern, Tomas, Julius Nyahongo, and Eivin Røskaft. “Livestock Loss Caused by Predators Outside the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania.” Biological Conservation 135, no. 4 (April, 2007): 518-526.

Homewood, K. W., and W. A. Rodgers. Maasailand Ecology: Pastoralist Development and Wildlife Conservation in Ngorongoro, Tanzania. 1991. Reprint. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Roodt, Veronica. The Tourist Travel and Field Guide of the Serengeti National Park. 4th ed. Hartebeesport, South Africa: Papyrus, 2005.

Turner, Myles. My Serengeti Years: The Memoirs of an African Game Warden. New York: W. W. Norton, 1987.