The Serengeti stretches across 14,763 square kilometres of northern Tanzania, from the short-grass plains in the south-east to the riverine forests of the Western Corridor and the rocky kopjes of the north. The name comes from the Maasai siringet — roughly, the place where the land runs on forever — and the description still holds when you stand on the plains at dawn.
The park was protected from 1940 and formally established in 1951; in 1959 its eastern section was separated to create the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, allowing Maasai pastoralists continued use of that land. UNESCO inscribed the Serengeti as a World Heritage Site in 1981.
It is the only place in Africa where mass land-animal migration still occurs at scale. The herds move in a broad clockwise circuit: calving on the southern plains from roughly January to March, moving north and west from April, crossing the Grumeti and then the Mara rivers between July and October, and returning south with the short rains. The park also carries Africa’s largest lion population, alongside leopard, cheetah, elephant, buffalo and more than 500 recorded bird species.