Named after the [G 29 / Masai] word "siringet," meaning endless, Serengeti National Park is famous for being one of the greatest wildlife viewing areas in the world today. Its topography as well as its diversity and concentration of wildlife are quintessential Africa.
The Serengeti's vast expanse of green grassland - dotted by isolated acacia trees, open woodlands and gently rolling terrain - cover 5,700 square miles. The park is home to over 500 species of birds, 30 species of [G 45 / ungulates] and 13 species of large [G 06 / carnivores] as well as a plethora of smaller animals.
The Masai moved to the Serengeti region from the upper Nile in the late 1700s. For the next 200 years they herded their cattle between plush green grasslands. After the first European explorers came to the area in the late 1890s and reported the wealth of large animals, game hunters streamed into the region. As a result of the slaughter that took place, a 900-square-mile sanctuary around the Seronera area was established in 1929.
Over the next 40 years the [L3 418 / boundaries] of the sanctuary were drawn and redrawn in attempts to preserve the wealth of the wildlife as well as cater to the needs of the local people.
Today, this condensed Texas-shaped park covers an area the size of the state of Connecticut. It extends from the woodlands at the Tanzania / Kenya border in the north to the grassy plains of the southeast and to the floodplain grasslands bordering Lake Victoria in the west.
Despite the legal protection a national park offers by its status, poaching has been a problem in the Serengeti for the past thirty years. Aggressive anti-poaching campaigns have lessened the slaughter, however the toll has still been high especially among the buffalo, elephant and rhinoceros populations. While the buffalo and elephant numbers stabilized, the black rhinoceros has been poached to extinction in the park.
