Serengeti National Park
the complete field guide to the endless plains
- 14,763 km² Park area (5,700 sq mi)
- Established in 1951
14,763 km²
Park area (5,700 sq mi)
1951
National park established
1.5M+
Wildebeest on migration
The place where the land runs forever
Serengeti National Park sits in northern Tanzania, stretching from the Ngorongoro Highlands in the southeast to Lake Victoria in the west and the Kenyan border in the north. Its name is widely traced to the Maasai word siringet, “the place where the land runs on forever” — a fair description of its near-treeless southern plains, which run to the horizon in every direction.
Gazetted in 1951 and inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981, the park protects the core of the wider Serengeti ecosystem, an intact web of national park, game reserves and conservation areas covering roughly 25,000–30,000 km² across Tanzania and Kenya. Unlike many reserves, it has no internal fences, which is precisely what allows its defining event — the Great Migration — to happen at all.
Altitudes range from about 920 to 1,850 metres, and the landscape shifts dramatically across the park: treeless volcanic grassland in the south, riverine forest and woodland along the Grumeti and Mbalageti rivers in the west, and open Commiphora woodland and granite kopjes in the north, near the Mara River.
