Location: 180 km (110 mi) West of Arusha Map
Area: 100 sq mi (264 sq km)
Age: 2.5 million years
Ngorongoro is a crater in Tanzania on the edge of the Serengeti. It
was formed when a volcanic mountain collapsed at this point. The
crater floor is at about 1700 m and the side walls are between 400
and 600 meters high, so that the crater rim is at about 2300 m. The
diameter of the crater is between 17 and 21 kilometers. In total,
the crater has an area of 26,400 hectares.
story
emergence
The formation of the Ngorongoro Crater is closely
linked to the formation of the East African Rift Valley. This began
to open about 18 million years ago in the Lower Miocene, causing
large areas in the area of today's rift valley to sag. In the
course of the opening of the rift valley there were numerous
volcanic activities, which in turn led to the bulging of the flanks.
This also formed what is now the volcanic highland of Ngorongoro
(Ngorongoro Volcanic Highland), which was once home to numerous
volcanoes. The first volcanic activity in the region took place at
the beginning of the Upper Miocene around 8 million years ago.
During the transition from the Pliocene to the Pleistocene, the
highlands reached their current altitude of around 2000 meters above
sea level around 2.5 million years ago. The then Ngorongoro volcano
was also characterized by its greatest activity during this period.
It is assumed that it corresponded to a stratovolcano comparable to
Kilimanjaro, around 200 kilometers away. Its slopes probably towered
over the current rim of the crater by around 3000 meters, which
brought it close in size to Kilimanjaro. The most recent activity in
the area of today's caldera occurred around 2 million years ago.
colonization
The Ngorongoro and the surrounding savanna
highlands have been settled by Maasai pastoralists since the 18th
century at the latest and used for nomadic grazing. The crater
itself had great spiritual significance for the Maasai, among other
things the Lerai Forest on the crater floor was used as a burial
ground. When the Austrian explorer Oskar Baumann visited the crater
in 1892, it was inhabited by Maasai; also when the farmer Adolf
Siedentopf applied to the German colonial government for land in the
crater in 1904 in order to breed cattle and farm in Ngorongoro.
Siedentopf's application was granted, and a few years later his
brother Friedrich Wilhelm also settled in the crater. The Maasai of
Ngorongoro were forcibly relocated to a reserve south of Kilimanjaro
in 1907, with their land rights revoked; only a few were allowed to
remain in the crater to assist the Siedentopfs in raising livestock.
Between 1912 and 1914, the German colonial administration developed
serious plans to declare the crater a nature reserve. However, it
was not possible to persuade Siedentopf to give up his lease.
Shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, the remaining
land in the crater was to be given to Boer settlers. Only the
outbreak of the First World War prevented this measure. During the
World War, the Siedentopfs left the crater.
national park
The crater has been part of the Serengeti National Park since 1951.
In 1959, a special protection area (Ngorongoro Conservation Area)
was set up outside the crater, in which the Maasai are allowed to
settle and graze. In 1975, agriculture in the crater was finally
banned. In 1979 it was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List and
in 1981 it was designated a biosphere reserve. In addition, the
crater was declared a World Heritage Site in 2010.
In a 2006
report to the World Heritage Committee, the park administration
wrote that the number of tourist vehicles in the crater was a
growing problem. In the outer areas there is considerable settlement
pressure. In the past, illegal fields regularly had to be removed.
Most recently, 60,000 shepherds with 350,000 head of cattle were
counted in the protected area. That is significantly more than the
country can feed without the ban on grain cultivation. The situation
is now to be eased by the state purchase of land outside the park.
climate and vegetation
Due to the different altitudes and the
dynamics of the air masses, the local climate varies greatly. The
high altitudes are mostly humid and hazy. The lowlands are subject
to strong temperature fluctuations. The amount of rain falls in the
months of November to April and also varies greatly depending on the
location.
The rims of the crater are overgrown with bush and
heathland, long grass savannah and remains of evergreen mountain
forests. The crater floor is covered with short grass savannah,
waterholes and acacia forests.
wildlife
About 25,000 large mammals populate the crater,
including the highest density of predators in Africa. The number of
zebras, buffaloes, wildebeests, elands and Grant's and Thomson's
gazelles is particularly large. They are hunted by lions, spotted
hyenas and leopards. There are also elephants in the crater and,
unusually in this area, hippos. There are still between 10 and 15
specimens of the endangered black rhino, whose population was over
100 animals in the 1960s. The great animal migrations in the
Serengeti also pass through the Ngorongoro Crater.
Ngorongoro
Conservation Area
With its 8200 km² it covers large parts of the
crater highlands, including the mountains Makerut and Oldeani with
3130 and 3188 m altitude. In the west near the Serengeti the annual
precipitation is 700 mm, in contrast up to 1400 mm in the highlands.
There are rarely more than a few dozen elephants in the Ngorongoro
Crater itself, but other elephant populations of uncertain size live
on the outer slopes of the crater and in the highlands, particularly
in the montane forest. In 1981 there were 8,288 elephants in the
sanctuary, by 1987 their number had dropped to 250.
The
number of foreign visitors to the nature reserve is increasing again
after a decline between 2014 and 2016 (as of 2019).
Miscellaneous
Michael Grzimek († 1959) and his father Bernhard
Grzimek († 1987) were buried on the edge of the crater. In the early
1960s, Bernhard Grzimek initiated the Serengeti Research Institute
with funds from the Frankfurt Zoological Society, which was intended
to research the migration routes and behavior of wild animals and
thus contribute to their long-term protection.