Elementor #10422
History of
The Serengeti
Timeline
1850
Maasai arrive from Kenya
1890
The decade of the 1890s was a disaster for Maasai on the Serengeti plains, struck first by rinderpest, which resulted in famine and smallpox. The starving peoples emigrated and were captured by other tribes. The next decade saw civil war between three family groups, exacerbated through restrictions imposed by the Germans, at the end of which the population was almost wiped out. However, during the First World War, when the Germans were on the run, the Maasai began to re-establish their lost ground. Even in 1905 warriors ventured west, establishing temporary barracks at Moru Kopjes from which to raid the Wasukuma further west. The Maasai never set up permanent camps west of Olduvai, even in the twentieth century.
1904
Anglo-German boundary commission established the border between British East Africa (Kenya) and German East Africa (Tanzania) which crossed the northern Serengeti.
1914
Leslie Simpson pioneered the route for vehicles from Nairobi via Narok south through the northern Serengeti to what is now Seronera.”
1919
Great Britain assumes control over Tanzania after WW1
1921
The British colonial administration established a partial game reserve of 800 acres (3.2 km2) to protect the area’s declining lion population.
1929
-The park was officially named Serengeti National Park and the area was expanded to 2286 sq. Km, the area being the current southern Serengeti today.
-Serengeti now being a ‘Closed Reserve’ ,sport hunting was allowed with a special licence
-90 square miles a section of what is now the central Serengeti, including Seronera, was made a full game reserve and it was at about this time that the Serengeti become world famous for its lions
Denys Finch-Hatton, was credited with the creation of Serengeti as a wildlife conservation area, as he raised awareness of massacres of lions
Major Monty Moore as the first game warden signalled the beginning of Serengeti as a protected area for conservation and the end of the free-for-all massacres of lions.
1937
-Moore worked at getting protection for lions, all hunting activities were banned due to high numbers of lions and elephants being killed
-A 900-square-mile area was declared the ‘Serengeti Game Sanctuary’. The boundaries were between the Mbalageti and Grumeti rivers as far as Speke Gulf in the west—what we now call the ‘corridor’—and along the old road to Naabi in the east from Banagi to about Lake Magadi.
-The colonial government announced its intention to create a national park.
1940
-The Serengeti National Park was formally declared, the Tanganyika government established a system of national parks, including Serengeti.
-A protected area status was granted to the reserve. At this time the present Ngorongoro Conservation Unit was part of the new Park, being known as Eastern Serengeti.
And the Loliondo district as far north as the Kenya border and east to the edge of the Gregory rift valley
-No action was taken due to distractions of the 2nd world until 1951.
1948
The Serengeti National Park Board of Trustees was formed to administer the park and grant it strict protection.
1951
– The boundaries were finally agreed after much discussion and the park proclaimed on 1 June 1951.”
-Tanganyika’s first national park was now established, which also included the Ngorongoro Crater.
-Covering Southern Serengeti and what is now the Ngorongoro Conservation Area
-Ngoronoro Crater being the park headquarters
-Serengeti now covering 3200 square miles (8,300 square kilometers)
1954
- There were 194 Maasai who lived in the Gol Mountains but used the western plains on a seasonal basis. Since the mid-1930s Maasai from the Gol Mountains had developed a seasonal grazing pattern: as the wildebeest left the western plains in June or July the Maasai followed them to the edge of the plains along the Ngare Nanyuki River in the north and towards Moru in the west to make use of spring water. They used these areas for some three months until the wildebeest returned in November, whereupon they retreated back to the Gol Mountains. This ebb and flow was constrained by ecological factors, namely tsetse fly, which prevented their further movement into the savanna, and the malignant catarrh fever carried by wildebeest, which caused the Maasai to move east again at the start of the rains.
•⁃In the Ngorongoro Crater: there were over 200 families, of which 82 were Masai, established on the floor of the Ngorongoro Crater, growing maize and tobacco, diverting streams for irrigation and destroying vegetation. Apart from the Masai, none of these new arrivals could claim traditional rights of occupancy in the Park, and in 1954 their activities were banned. By the end of the year almost all the cultivation in the Park had ceased and most of the crop growers had been re-settled elsewhere.
1955
In the Moru Kopjes in the Western Serengeti there were also nearly 100 families of Ndorobo with 10,000 head of cattle and 8,000 head of small stock. Unlike the Masai, who used this area seasonably, the Ndorobo had established permanent bomas, from which they took a steady toll of game with poisoned arrows. As a result of pressure from the Park authorities, the Administration and the Masai elders, the Ndorobo were forced to leave the Park in March 1955 and settle elsewhere.
1956
-The problem was where to draw the boundaries. To decide these boundaries one needed information on both the location of pastoralists and the movements of the migrating wildlife herds about which almost nothing was known
-No one at that time had any idea where these migrating animals came from or where they went.
- A commission of enquiry employed Professor Pearsall to make the study. He reported that there were two groups of migrating wildebeest, one from the Ngorongoro Crater that moved onto the eastern Serengeti plains in the wet season, and one from the corridor that used the western plains. In between the two there was a gap not used by either, a gap that could conveniently be used for the boundary of the new Serengeti National Park. This advice was accepted and the new boundary running north–south across the middle of the plains was legislated in 1959 (Map 2). The information that Pearsall used was more hearsay than fact and was incorrect—the Ngorongoro wildebeest never went onto the eastern plains but remained on the highlands or in the Crater itself. Instead the main migratory wildebeest of Serengeti used the whole of the plains including the Salai plains at the far eastern edge of the Gregory rift valley. Since the new boundary alignment the migratory wildebeest have moved outside the Serengeti National Park each year during the wet season. These movements have caused a confrontation with the Maasai because wildebeest carry malignant catarrh fever, a disease that kills cattle. Maasai herds move away from the plains when the wildebeest are there.
1958
In 1958 Bernard and Michael Grzimek were invited by the Director of National Parks, P. G. Molloy, to conduct the first wildlife survey of the Serengeti ecosystem. Part of their work documented the movements of the migrants and they showed up the fallacy in Pearsall’s report. However, by this time it was too late and the boundaries had been settled despite strong protests from the Grzimeks.
1959
-Serengeti was separated from the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and established as its own national park.
-Serengeti boundaries were expanded to the Kenyan border to the North.
The Maasai were all migrated into the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, this meant that the Maasai can live and graze their cattle in NCAA but not in Serengeti
-The northern extension—the whole area north of the Orangi River to the Mara River—was added, because this area had never had inhabitants due to the presence of tsetse fly; no people were moved out. It was a remarkable stroke of luck, perhaps the greatest piece of luck in conservation history, because this area turned out to be the essential dry season refuge for the migration, indeed the most important area of the whole ecosystem—without it the migration would have collapsed and the Serengeti reduced to just another sample of savanna with resident animals.
-Bernard Grzimek’s distribution maps showed the animals moving north but far to the west and he opposed this addition because it appeared unused by the migration—his maps were simply too inaccurate and he misplaced the migration routes.
-When the NCA was created they decided to fence the western entrance of the Angata Kiti valley in the Gol Mountains so as to exclude the wildebeest and keep the area for cattle. When the wildebeest and zebra migration arrived on the plains in 1960 they went straight into the fence, several hundred thousand at once, and the fence fell over. Sensibly they did not try to put the fence up again.
-Serengeti now covering an area of 5,335 square miles (13,818 square km)
1961
The Maasai Mare Game Reserve was established
1962
Maswa Game Reserve was established
1965
The Lamai wedge was added to Serengeti, between the Mara River and Kenyan Border thus creating a continuous protected corridor for the wildebeest migration from the Serengeti plains in the south to the Loita plains in the north.”
1967
-The Grumeri River in the western corridor was added
-Lamai wedge adjoining the Tanzania-Kenya border and a strip north of the Grumeti river in the western ‘corridor’ which, taken together, amount to a further 945 square kilometres.
-Serengeti now covering an area of 5,700 square miles (14,763 square km)
1972
Serengeti was among the first places to be proposed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO at 1972 Stockholm conference.
1981
Serengeti National Park was Gazetted as a UNESCO world heritage site it was voted the most important natural area in the world along with the Ngorongoro Conservation Area
1993
Grumeti and Ikorongo Game reserves were established
2003
Wildlife Management Areas were decreed