Best Travel Guide To Ngorongoro Crater Conservation Area (NCA) Wildlife in Tanzania

Best Travel Guide To Ngorongoro Crater  Conservation Area (NCA)  Wildlife in Tanzania 

A visit to the Ngorongoro Crater is an experience of a lifetime. Few places have wildlife densities and variety on this level. It is not unusual to see the Big Five in one day – and all this in the most amazing setting with a backdrop of the 600m/1,968ft-high crater wall.

The Ngorongoro Crater is a class tourist destination that offers the most outstanding tourism experiences of a lifetime and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Crater has the densest known population of lions. The area also borders the Serengeti home to large wildlife populations.

Ngorongoro Crater  Conservation Area (NCA)  Location and formation:

It’s located in Ngorongoro District, west of Arusha City, in northern Tanzania. The great Ngorongoro crater was formed as a result of large volcanic eruptions causing the volcano to collapse on itself about a million years ago thus creating a large volcanic caldera. It’s the World's largest inactive, intact & unfilled volcanic caldera in the Eastern Great Rift Valley.

Ngorongoro Crater  Conservation Area (NCA)  Size:

The Crater covers an area of 304 square kilometers and it’s 19.5 km with the floor lying 630 meters below the rim. The Ngorongoro Crater floor is dominated by open grassland and it provides a patch of woodland known as Lerai Forest. This Forest provides shelter for animals such as elephants, eland, monkeys,s and various bird species.

Ngorongoro Crater  Conservation Area (NCA)  Management and Administration:

The Ngorongoro Crater is managed under the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA), which is also part of the Serengeti-Ngorongoro Biosphere Reserve, under UNESCO’s Man and Biosphere Program since 1981. NCA is the most successful multiple-used managed (IUCN Protected Area Category VI) area in the World, where indigenous people (estimated at 88,000 people) are, so far, living harmoniously and peacefully with wildlife.

Ngorongoro Crater  Conservation Area (NCA)  Scenery:

The Ngorongoro Crater Conservation area is stunningly beautiful. Aside from the well-known Ngorongoro Crater, Empakaai and Olmoti Craters are scenic highlights as well. Both the Ngorongoro and Empakaai Craters regularly have flocks of flamingos. The forested crater rim of the Ngorongoro Crater is in stark contrast with the Crater floor, which consists mostly of grassland. Another feature on the crater floor is the Lerai forest, a beautiful, atmospheric, yellow fever tree forest.

Ngorongoro Crater  Conservation Area (NCA)  Wildlife:

The Ngorongoro Crater offers some of the best wildlife viewing in Africa. All the major safari animals occur in great numbers. The resident population of black rhinos is a real treat, as rhinos are very difficult to spot elsewhere in Tanzania. The crater is also home to some very impressive elephant bulls with huge tusks. Lake Magadi often harbors large flocks of flamingos.

Ngorongoro Crater is home to a population of about 25,000 large animals, mostly unregulated, alongside the highest density of mammalian predators in Africa including the densest population of lions. The Crater also harbors a range of endangered species such as black rhinos, wild hunting dogs, and golden cats.

The Crater also houses one of the largest animal migrations on earth, including over 1 million wildebeest, 72,000 zebras, and 350,000 Thompson and Grant gazelles.

The star attraction of the Conservation Area is the Ngorongoro Crater: an extinct volcano teeming with wildlife. All major animals are easily seen. The only exception is the giraffe which is present in the Conservation Area, but not in the Crater because of the steep descent. Elephants are common, including some very big tuskers, and all the big cats are prominent as well.

A real special of the crater is the black Rhino, which is hard to see in Tanzania, and usually sticks to thick vegetation. This is not so in the crater, where they have a predictable routine of spending the night in Lerai forest, and the day in open grassland. Black-backed and golden jackals are equally common in the crater and the density of spotted hyenas is quite extraordinary.

Other notable wildlife species include buffaloes, wildebeest, zebras, and gazelles among others

Ngorongoro Crater  Conservation Area (NCA)  Birding:

The Crater is home to about 500 bird species. The mix of forests, canyons, grasslands, lakes, and marshes forms an ideal habitat for an enormous variety of birds. During the rainy season, you can see the arrival of Eurasian migratory birds at the open pools. White storks and yellow wagtails mingle with the resident inhabitants – stilts, saddle bill storks, ibis, ruff, and various species of duck.

Lesser flamingos also fly in to feed from their feeding grounds at Lake Natron. Distinctive grassland birds such as ostrich, Kori bustards, and crown cranes occasionally put on truly magnificent displays.

Ngorongoro – Serengeti – Mara great migration:

During the periods of January through March, the southern Serengeti National Park, and the western part of the NCA are inhabited by an estimated 1.5+ million herds of wildebeest and zebra, which is part of the greatest migration of wild animals on earth.

From as early as December the migration starts to move into the NCA. The short grass plains here are rich in nutrition, which provides the herds with the best conditions to raise their newborn. Mid-February is the calving season when approximately 8,000 wildebeest are born every day for a period of approximately 3 weeks.

Therefore the area around Lake Ndutu on the western part of Ngorongoro is the place to be at this time of the year. About 400,000 zebra and 200,000 gazelles accompany the wildebeest along the way, making a total of over 2 million migrating animals in Ngorongoro and Serengeti National Park.

Ngorongoro Crater  Conservation Area (NCA)  Cultural Heritage:

The conservation area also contains Olduvai Gorge, one of the most important pale anthropological sites in the world. The area has been subject to extensive archaeological research for over 80 years and has yielded a long sequence of evidence of human evolution.

Tribes of the Ngorongoro Crater  Conservation Area (NCA) :

The culture and people of Ngorongoro form one of the important attractions that tourists, Anthropologists, and Archeologists do not dare to miss when visiting Ngorongoro. Over thousands of years, a succession of pastoralists lived in and left the area, sometimes driven by other tribal groups, and these include the Maasai, Datoga, and Hadza tribes.

Ngorongoro Crater  Conservation Area (NCA)  Weather and Climate:

Conditions at Ngorongoro vary depending on the altitude. Higher up, at the Crater itself, it can get quite cold at night, particularly up on the rim. But down in the greater conservation area, it stays quite warm. During the area's Dry season (June to October) there's barely a cloud in the sky. In the Wet season (November to May) you'll confront two periods of rain separated by a brief dry spell.

Best time to visit Ngorongoro Crater  Conservation Area (NCA) :

Wildlife viewing is excellent in the crater throughout the year. The scenery of the crater is most spectacular in the Wet season, from November to May, but at that time the grass might be long in places. This can interfere with seeing some of the smaller animals. March and April are the wettest months.

Where to stay In Ngorongoro Crater  Conservation Area (NCA) :

There is one public campsite named Simba A, situated west of the Crater rim with toilets, hot water showers, kitchen and dining hall facilities. You will need to prepare and come with your own tents, food supplies, and cooking utensils.

A good number of special campsites are found within NCA, some can be found in the Crater rim while others are scattered within NCA (Ndutu areas, the preferred site to watch wildebeest migration).

There are several tented campsites in the area. Such tented campsites are Lake Masek, Lake Ndutu Luxury Camp, Oldupai Camp, and Ngorongoro Wild Camp.

3 Lodges on the southwest rim of the Crater include Ngorongoro Wildlife Lodge, Ngorongoro Serena Hotel, and Ngorongoro Crater Lodge. On the eastern rim, there is Sopa Lodge while Ndutu Safari Lodge is situated in the Ndutu area among others.

Ngorongoro Crater  Conservation Area (NCA)  Access:

The Ngorongoro conservation area is a 3-hour and 15-minute drive from Arusha town via tarmac road.

Arrange and book with ULTIMATE WILD SAFARIS for a memorable safari in the great Ngorongoro in Tanzania.

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