Serengeti National Park

The Serengeti is a giant park in Tanzania, in Africa.

It has wide grassy plains, trees and rocky hills. The plains go on and on. Lots and lots of wild animals live here.

Serengeti National Park is in northern Tanzania, in East Africa. It covers 14,763 square kilometers, mostly savanna: wide grasslands with scattered trees. UNESCO describes its 'endless plains' of short grass dotted with rocky outcrops called kopjes, with rivers and woodlands in between.

The park is famous for the great migration. Every year huge herds of wildebeest, zebras and gazelles move around the Serengeti and into Kenya in search of fresh grass and water, and predators follow them. Tanzania National Parks, which runs the park, gives about 1.35 million wildebeest in its 2024 guideline; UNESCO's 2012 statement about the park gives about 2 million. The Serengeti became a World Heritage Site in 1981.

UNESCO lists Serengeti National Park at 1,476,300 ha, inscribed in 1981 under criteria (vii) and (x). It sits at the heart of a larger Serengeti ecosystem, defined by the area the migration covers: Ngorongoro Conservation Area to the south-east, Maswa Game Reserve to the south, Grumeti and Ikorongo Game Reserves, Loliondo Game Controlled Area, and Kenya's Maasai Mara National Reserve to the north. UNESCO says no barriers hamper the migration within this intact ecosystem.

UNESCO's statement of the park's value describes about 25,000 km² of treeless short grasslands, dotted with rocky outcrops (kopjes) and interspersed with rivers and woodlands, and calls the migration the largest remaining unaltered animal migration in the world. Under Tanzania's National Parks Ordinance of 1959, Tanzania National Parks (TANAPA) manages the site; its Mara River guideline (revised June 2024) gives about 1.35 million western white-bearded wildebeest, while UNESCO's statement of value, adopted by the World Heritage Committee in 2012, gives about 2 million.

Wildebeest, zebras and gazelles eat the grass.

Lions, leopards, cheetahs and hyenas live here too. So do elephants, giraffes and buffalo. More than 500 kinds of birds fly over the plains.

The Serengeti is full of grazers: animals that eat grass. UNESCO's 2012 statement about the park lists about 2 million wildebeest, 900,000 Thomson's gazelles and 300,000 zebras, plus buffalo, giraffes, elephants, hippos and black rhinos. Alongside the grazers live predators: lions, leopards, cheetahs, spotted hyenas and African wild dogs.

There are also more than 500 kinds of birds, and UNESCO says the park has the highest ostrich population in Tanzania. Tanzania National Parks adds snakes, crocodiles and frogs in the riverside areas. Tanzania National Parks calls the wildebeest a keystone species: their grazing opens up pasture for other animals, and their dung feeds the plants and about 100 kinds of dung beetles.

UNESCO's statement of value (adopted 2012) lists 2 million wildebeest, 900,000 Thomson's gazelles and 300,000 zebras as the dominant herds, with 7,000 eland, 27,000 topi, 18,000 hartebeest, 70,000 buffalo, 4,000 giraffes, 2,700 elephants, 500 hippos and 200 black rhinos, and major predators including 4,000 lions, 1,000 leopards, 225 cheetahs, 3,500 spotted hyenas and 300 wild dogs; it calls the park home to one of the largest and most diverse large predator-prey interactions worldwide. Tanzania National Parks' own site (2026) gives more than 3,000 lions. UNESCO names black rhino, elephant, wild dog and cheetah as globally threatened, and counts over 500 bird species, five endemic to Tanzania.

Tanzania National Parks' 2024 guideline calls the wildebeest a keystone species: eating over 1.7 million tons of grass a year, the herds open pasture for zebra, hartebeest and gazelles, and the migration deposits about 3,500 tons of dung a day, food for the vegetation and for about 100 species of dung beetles.

Every year, the wildebeest go on a long walk.

They walk to find fresh grass and water. Early in the year, many babies are born. The babies can walk very soon after they are born!

The migration is a giant loop. UNESCO describes over a million wildebeest, plus hundreds of thousands of other grazers, traveling about 1,000 kilometers each year through Tanzania and Kenya in search of grass and water.

In January and February the herds gather on the short-grass plains near the Ngorongoro highlands to have their calves. Tanzania National Parks says more than 250,000 calves are born each year, most of them in a few weeks starting in mid-February, and a calf can walk within 3 to 7 minutes of birth. In the dry season the herds rely on the Mara River in the north, the only river there that can supply them with water then.

UNESCO describes over one million wildebeest and hundreds of thousands of other ungulates on a 1,000 km annual circular trek spanning Kenya and Tanzania, in search of pasture and water. Tanzania National Parks' 2024 Mara River guideline gives the scale of one year: about 1.35 million wildebeest eating about 4,800 tons of grass a day; over 250,000 calves, four-fifths of them born within a few weeks from mid-February on the short-grass plains (8,000 to 12,000 births a day); calves mobile within 3 to 7 minutes; and about 300,000 females conceiving in less than a month during the rut.

The guideline describes the whole Serengeti-Mara-Ngorongoro ecosystem as relying on the annual migration of about 1.6 million wildebeest and zebras, and the Mara River as the only water source in the Serengeti able to sustain the migration in the dry season. TANAPA advises June to October, the dry season, for watching the migration and January to February for the calving season.