Serengeti Mara Ecosystem

The Serengeti - Mara Ecosystem supports the most diverse migration of grazing mammals on earth. The Mara, although only a quarter of the total ecosystem area, is crucial to the survival of the entire system because it is the source of forage for wildlife migrating through the Serengeti during critical points in the dry season.

Only 25% of the wildlife habitat in the Mara part of the ecosystem is protected (in the Mara Reserve); the rest lies within pastoral and agricultural areas north of the reserve.

These lands outside the reserve are also under more pressure than the rest of the ecosystem, with recent unprecedented human population growth, expansion of wheat farming in wildebeest calving grounds and expansion of tourism facilities.

Recent efforts to privatise land are also changing the way people have interacted with wildlife over many millennia. Since the mid-1970s, these pressures have caused a 60% decline in wildlife both inside and outside the Mara Reserve.