In Africa, just south of the equator, lies one of the oldest and yet most vibrant ecosystems of the world: the Serengeti. The great plains in the north of Tanzania, the Ngorongoro highlands to the east, the Kenyan Maasai Mara to the north and a stretch of woodland reaching as far as Lake Victoria in the west comprise a diverse and unique ecosystem spanning a total area of about 25,000 square kilometres.

With resilient populations of predators like lions, hyenas and leopards and iconic wildlife such as elephants, giraffes and rhinos, the Serengeti is the legacy landscape of East-African wilderness. The Serengeti National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1981. It covers an area of almost 15,000 square kilometres, more than half of the ecosystem.

Some of the most beautiful parts of the park are dotted with granite outcrops. The so-called ‘kopjes’, named after their rounded shapes, are islands of biodiversity in a sea of grass. There are the typical inhabitants like hyraxes and lizards, but kopjes also serve as outlook posts and resting places for predators like lions and leopards. The Maasai kopjes are famous as a spot for seeing lions and the Moru kopjes in the centre of the National Park served as refuge for the Serengeti’s last black rhinos at the height of the poaching onslaught.

Kopjes in vast expanses of grassland, woodlands, marshes and hills all shape the savanna landscape of the Serengeti. Rivers like the seasonal Seronera and Grumeti rivers and the Serengeti’s only all-year source of water, the Mara river, give rise to stretches of vegetation that are green throughout the dry season.

The Serengeti is world famous for the Great Migration. The yearly cycle of movements of vast herds of wildebeests, zebras and Thomson gazelles follows rains and regrowth of pasture. The Great Migration is the largest hoofed animals’ migration on earth and one of the last intact migratory systems of large mammals. It attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors each year.

The beginnings of the Great Migration reach farther back in time than the modern humans’ first ventures ‘out of Africa’. On their continuous search for food and water, close to two million wildebeests, zebras and Thomson’s gazelles spend the dry season in the wetter northern woodland of Serengeti. Then they follow the seasonal rains south and converge on the Serengeti plains in the wet season. Their stable numbers prove that the Serengeti is still a functioning dynamic ecosystem.

Frankfurt Zoological Society has been active in support to the Serengeti for six decades. The ‘Serengeti Conservation Project’ focuses on the protection of the park and works hand-in-hand with the ‘Serengeti Ecosystem Management’ project, which enhances community participation in the conservation of the buffer zone and wildlife corridors around the park. Since 2012, FZS has more than doubled annual investments in the Serengeti projects to more than two million Euro.