NATIONAL PARKS | wethenature

Tanzanian National Parks

In Tanzania we have many National Parks,Which are under favourable condition for our guest.be kindly and happy when you visit Tanzanian National Parks.Some of them are:

The Serengeti National Park

The Serengeti National Park (2°19′58″S 34°34′00″E) is a large national park in Serengeti area, Tanzania. It is most famous for its annual migration of over one million white bearded (or brindled) wildebeest and 200,000 zebra.

History

The Maasai people had been grazing their livestock in the open plains which they knew as “endless plain” for over 200 years when the first European explorers visited the area. The name Serengeti is an approximation of the word used by the Maasai to describe the area. German geographer and explorer Dr. Oscar Baumann entered the area in 1892. Baumann killed three rhinos during a stay in the Ngorongoro crater.

The first Briton to enter the Serengeti, Stewart Edward White, recorded his explorations in the northern Serengeti in 1913. Stewart returned to the Serengeti in the 1920s, and camped in the area around Seronera for three months. During this time he and his companions shot 50 lions.

Because the hunting of lions made them so scarce, the British decided to make a partial Game Reserve of 800 acres (3.2 km2) in the area in 1921 and a full one in 1929. These actions became the basis for Serengeti National Park, which was established in 1951. 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.

As part of the creation of the park, and in order to preserve wildlife, the resident Maasai were moved to the Ngorongoro highlands. There is still considerable controversy surrounding this move, with claims made of coercion and deceit on the part of the colonial authorities.

The Serengeti is Tanzania's oldest national park and remains the flagship of the country’s tourism industry, providing a major draw to the “Northern Safari Circuit”, encompassing Lake Manyara, Tarangire and Arusha national parks, as well as Ngorongoro Conservation Area.

Geography and Wildlife

The park covers 14,763 km² (5,700 square miles) of grassland plains and savanna as well as riverine forest and woodlands. The park lies in the north of the country, bordered to the north by the national Tanzania and Kenyan border, where it is continuous with the Masai Mara National Reserve. To the south-east of the park is Ngorongoro Conservation Area, to the south-west lies Maswa Game Reserve, and to the western borders are Ikorongo and Grumeti Game Reserves, finally to the north-east lies Loliondo Game Control Area.

Human habitation is forbidden in the National Park with the exception of staff for TANAPA, researchers and staff of Frankfurt Zoological Society, and staff of the various lodges and hotels. The main settlement is Seronera which houses the majority of research staff and the park’s main headquarters, including its primary airstrip.

As well as the migration of ungulates, the park is well known for its healthy stock of other resident wildlife, particularly the "Big Five", named for the five most prized trophies taken by hunters: the lion, leopard, elephant, rhinoceros and buffalo. These species remain the key attractions to tourists, but the park also supports many further species, including the cheetah, gazelle and giraffe, as well as a large and varied bird population..

Tarangire National Park

Tarangire National Park is in northern Tanzania, 115 km from Arusha. As it lies among the Arusha Dodoma Road, it is quite accessible by car. It is a large park, spanning 2,600 square km. The Park is named after the shallow but vital river which crosses it lengthwise, which gives support to a large wildlife population during the dry season.

A seasonal migration of wildlife is concentrated here July through October, thousands of animals including wildebeests, zebras, elands, elephants, buffaloes, hartebeests, and more migrate from the dry Maasai steppe to the Tarangire River. Lions and other predators can also be found in abundance during the dry season. Tarangire, home to large herds of elephant, has a spectacularly scenic baobab woodland.

Facilities: A lodge, a safari camp, and airstrip, and several camping sites.

Lake Manyara National Park

Lake Manyara is a shallow fresh-water lake in Tanzania. Said by Charles Gilpin to be the "loveliest [lake] ... in Africa," it is also the home of a diverse set of landscapes and wildlife.

The name "Manyara" comes from the Maasai word emanyara, which is a euphorbia species of plant that is grown into a hedge around a family homestead (Euphorbia tirucalli).

Of the 127 square miles (329 km2) of Lake Manyara National Park, the lake's alkaline waters cover approximately 89 square miles (231 km2). While most known for baboons, the lake and its environs is also home to herbivores such as hippos, impalas, elephants, wildebeests, buffalo, warthogs and giraffes. Giant fig trees and mahogany seen in the groundwater forest immediately around the park gates draw nourishment from the underground springs replenished continuously from crater highlands directly above the Manyara basin. Leading away from the forest to the fringes of Lake Manyara are the flood plains. To the south are visible the acacia woodlands. Leopards, although in abundance, are hard to get a glimpse of, just like the other elusive carnivores - the lions - of this park.

Lake Manyara provides opportunities for ornithologists keen on viewing and observing over 300 migratory birds, including flamingo, long-crested eagle and grey-headed kingfisher.

With an entrance gate that doubles as an exit, the trail of Lake Manyara National Park is effectively a loop that can be traversed by jeep within a couple of hours that may be stretched to a few more at best, if driving slowly, to watch, observe and enjoy the diversity of flora and fauna. The Rift Valley escarpment forms a noteworthy landmark and provides a spectacular backdrop to Lake Manyara.

Arusha National Park

Arusha National Park covers Mount Meru, a prominent volcano with an elevation of 4566 m, in the Arusha Region of north eastern Tanzania.

The park is small but varied with spectacular landscapes in three distinct areas. In the west, the Meru Crater funnels the Jekukumia River; the peak of Mount Meru lies on its rim. Ngurdoto Crater in the south-east is grassland. The shallow alkaline Momella Lakes in the north-east have varying algal colours and are known for their wading birds.

Mount Meru is the second highest peak in Tanzania after Mount Kilimanjaro, which is just 60 km away and forms a backdrop to views from the park to the east. Arusha National Park lies on a 300-kilometre axis of Africa's most famous national parks, running from Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater in the west to Kilimanjaro National Park in the east.

The park is just a few kilometres north east of Arusha, though the main gate is 25 km east of the city. It is also 58 km from Moshi and 35 km from Kilimanjaro International Airport (KIA).

Wildlife
Arusha National Park has a rich variety of wildlife. Despite the small size of the park, common animals include giraffe, buffalo, zebra, warthog, the black-and-white colobus monkey, the blue monkey, flamingos and more..

Ngorongoro Conservation Area

The Nature Zoo Famous Ngorongoro Crater, 2,286 metres above sea level, is the largest un broken caldera in the world. Surrounded by very steep walls rising 610 metres from the crater floor, this natural amphitheatre covers 260 square km. That's 100 square miles and is home to over 25,000 large mammals. About half of the animals are zebras and wildebeests.

There are also gazelles, buffaloes, elands, hartebeests, warthogs, and the rare rhinoceros. Occasionally Maasai can also be seen bringing their cattle down the crater walls to the lake below. Such vast numbers of animals attract many predators, including lions, hyenas, cheetahs, and leopards. More than 100 species of birds not found in the Serengeti can also be spotted here. Countless flamingoes from a pink blanket over the soda lakes.

The Crater has been declared a World Heritage site. The Ngorongoro crater lies within Ngorongoro Conservation Area, which covers more than 8,000 square km. It is bounded Lake Eyasi in the southwest and the Gol Mountains in the north. Roughly in the center is the Olbalal Swamp and the arid.

Olduvai Gorge: It is dotted with extinct craters and high plains and to the north is Oldonyo le Ngai, a grey, forbidding perfest cone that is a still-active volcano.

History and geography
Based on fossil evidence found at the Olduvai Gorge, it is known that various hominid species have occupied the area for 3 million years. Hunter gatherers were replaced by pastorialists a few thousand years ago. The Mbulu came to the area about 2,000 years ago, and were joined by the Datoga around the year 1700. Both groups were driven from the area by the Maasai in the 1800s. Massive fig trees in the northwest of the Lerai Forest are sacred to the Maasai and Datoga people. Some of them may have been planted on the grave of a Datago leader who died in battle with the Maasai around 1840.

No Europeans are known to have set foot in the Crater until 1892, when it was visited by Dr. Oscar Baumann. Two German brothers farmed in the Crater until the outbreak of World War I, after leasing the land from the German colonial administration then in control of East Africa. Dr. Baumann shot three rhinos while camped in the crater, and the German brothers regularly organized shooting parties to entertain their German friends. They also attempted to drive the wildebeest herds out of the crater.

The Ngorongoro area originally was part of the Serengeti National Park when it was created by the British in 1951. Maasai continued to live in the newly created park until 1959, when repeated conflicts with park authorities over land use led the British to evict them to the newly declared Ngorongoro Conservation Area.

Land in the conservation area is multi-use, it is unique in Tanzania as the only conservation area providing protection status for wildlife whilst allowing human habitation. As such land use is controlled to prevent negative effects on the wildlife population, for example cultivation is prohibited at all but subsistence levels.

The area is part of the Serengeti ecosystem, and to the north-west, it adjoins the Serengeti National Park and is contiguous with the southern Serengeti plains, these plains also extend to the north into unprotected Loliondo division and are kept open to wildlife through trans-human pastoralism practiced by Maasai. The south and west of the area are volcanic highlands, including the famous Ngorongoro Crater and the lesser known Empakai. The southern and eastern boundaries are approximately defined by the rim of the Great Rift Valley wall, which also prevents animal migration in these directions.

Wildlife
A population of approximately 25,000 large animals, largely ungulates along with reputedly the highest density of mammalian predators in Africa, lives in the crater. These include the black rhinoceros, whose local population declined from about 108 in 1964-66 to between 11-14 in 1995, and the hippopotamus, which is very uncommon in the area. There also are many other ungulates: the wildebeest (7,000 estimated in 1994), the zebra (4,000), the eland, and Grant's and Thomson's gazelles (3,000).

The Selous Game Reserve

The Selous Game Reserve is one of the largest fauna reserves of the world, located in the south of Tanzania. It was named after Englishman Sir Frederick Selous, a famous big game hunter and early conservationist, who died in in this territory in 1917 while fighting against the Germans in World War I. It was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982 due to the diversity of its wildlife and undisturbed nature.

The reserve covers a total area of 54,600 km² (21,081 square miles). Some of the typical animals of the savanna (for example elephants, hippopotami, African Wild Dog and crocodiles) can be found in this park in a larger numbers than in any other African park.

The area became a hunting reserve in 1905. Nowadays it also has a touristic importance, though most of it is rarely visited by humans.

Interesting places in the park include the river of Rufiji, which flows into the Indian Ocean in front of the Mafia Island and the Stiegler, a canyon of 100 metres depth and 100 metres width. Around this canyon can be found most of the touristic facilities.

In the Selous Reserve safari by foot is permitted. This type of exploration is forbidden in most other national parks of Africa

Gombe Stream National Park

Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania, located at 4 40' S 29 38' E, is the smallest of that country's national parks and was formed in 1968 to give protection to 150 chimpanzees that lived there, made famous by the primatologist Jane Goodall. Researchers have been studying the chimpanzee population there for many years, and have gained valuable insights into the behavior of our closest nonhuman relatives. The park forms a 2.5 km by 14 km strip of land near the shore of Lake Tanganyika. The actual lakeshore is excluded from the park, however, allowing visitors to camp or walk along the shore.

The total area of the park is 52 km². In addition to chimpanzees, primates in the park include vervet and colobus monkeys and baboons. Other wildlife in the park include forest pigs, small antelopes and many species of birds.

National Parks & Reserves