Serengeti National Park is one the most popular Tanzania safari destinations, it’s the country’s oldest park. It’s largely known for its unbelievable scenery and magnificent wildlife with annual migration of millions of wildebeest, about 200,000 zebras and 300,000 Thomson’s Gazelle as they go through crocodile infested waters.

Size of Serengeti national park

The Serengeti national park covers an area of about 14,750squarekilometers famously known as almost endless plains. The plains are filled with riverine forest, grassland plains, savannah and woodlands so dry in the dry season and a green carpet when the rains get back.

Location of Serengeti national park

Serengeti National Park sits northwest of Tanzania bordered by Kenya’s Masai Mara National Reserve to the North, Ngorongoro Conservation Area to the southeast and Maswa Game Reserve in the southwest. To the west is Ikorongo and Grumeti Game Reserves and to the northeast and east lies the Loliondo Game Control Area forming the larger Serengeti ecosystem.

Serengeti is part of the Northern Safari Circuit attractions along with Lake Manyara National Park, Tarangire National Park, Arusha National Park and the Ngorongoro Conservation Area.

The history of Serengeti national park

This park has its history originating from the Maasai people who had been grazing their livestock in the open plains of eastern Mara Region, which they named “endless plains.” The name Serengeti is a supposition used by the Maasai to describe the area, as a place where the land runs on forever.

The first American to reach the Serengeti, Stewart Edward White arrived in 1913. He recorded his surveys in the northern Serengeti, returned in 1920s and camped in the area around Seronera for three months. During this time, he and his friends shot 50 lions. Since lion hunting made them scarce, the British colonial administration made a partial game reserve of 800 acres (3.2 km2) in the area in 1921 and made it complete in 1929.

From this time, the basis for Serengeti National Park Tanzania was set. The park was later established in 1951. In an effort to prevent wildlife, the British evicted the resident Maasai from the park in 1959 and moved them to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. The Serengeti gained more fame after the initial work of Bernhard Grzimek and his son Michael in the 1950s. Together, they produced the book and film Serengeti Shall Not Die, widely recognized as one of the most important early pieces of nature conservation documentary.

The almost treeless grassland of the south hosts the largest mammal migration of the world known as the great wildebeest migration. The wildebeests, also called gnus, are a kind of antelopes, and belong to the family Bovidae, which includes antelopes, cattle, goats, sheep and other even-toed horned ungulates. This and more are what to see in Serengeti national park. If you need to know more about the wildebeest migration, click here.

Plan that safari and gaze at millions of wildlife as they survive in the beautiful endless plains of Serengeti.