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Serengeti National Park is 335km
from Arusha town, and is one of the best-known wildlife
sanctuary in the world, it covers about 14763sq km terrain
includes various types of vegetation: grassy plains,
savannah with acacias, wooded hills and mountains are
the backdrop for an extraordinary concentration of animals
which reaches its peak during the wildebeest migration.
There are said to be 2 million wildebeest on the Serengeti
- Mara plains and every year they migrate in search
of grazing within an area of about 26,000sq miles. The
best time to see the wildebeest migration is from December-July,
and the best time to see predators is from June-October.
The Serengeti is on of the world's last
great wildlife refuges. This vast area of land supports
the greatest remaining concentration of plain game in
Africa, on a scale unparalleled anywhere else in the
world. The name comes from the Maasai 'Siringet', meaning
endless plains. Equal in size to Northern Ireland, the
Park contains an estimated three million large animals,
most of which take part in a seasonal migration that
is one of nature's wonders.
The annual migration of more than 1.5
million wildebeests as well as hundreds of thousands
of zebras and gazelles is triggered by the rains. The
wet season starts in November and lasts until about
May. Generally the herds congregate and move out at
the end of May. Their movement is a continual search
for grass and water - the moving mass of animals requiring
over 4,000 tons of grass each day. The exodus coincides
with the breeding season which causes fights among the
males. As the dry season sets in the herds drift out
of the West, one group to the North, the other north-east
heading for the permanent waters of the northern rivers
and the Mara. The immigration instinct is so strong
that animals die in the rivers as they dive from the
banks into the raging waters, to be dispatched by crocodiles.
The survivors concentrate in Kenya's Maasai Mara National
reserve until the grazing there is exhausted, when they
turn south along the eastern and final stage of the
migration route. Before the main exodus, the herds are
a spectacular sight, massed in huge numbers with the
weak and crippled at the tail end of the procession,
followed by the patient, vigilant predators.
Cheater patrol in Serengeti National
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Lions in Serengeti National Park |
The vegetation in the Serengeti ranges
from the short and long grass plains in the south, to
the acacia savannah in the centre and the wooded grassland
concentrated around tributaries of the Grumeti and Mara
rivers. The western corridor is a region of wooded highland
and extensive plains reaching to the edge of Lake Victoria.
The Seronera Valley in the Serengeti
is famous for the abundance lion and leopard that can
usually be seen quite easily. The adult male lions of
the Serengeti have characteristic black manes.
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