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June 8, 2017

3057, 3074, 3081 TANZANIA - Serengeti National Park (UNESCO WHS)

3057 Wildbeest during the Great Migration in Serengeti National Park

Posted on 18.05.2017, 01.06.2017, 08.06.2017
The Serengeti National Park lies in northwestern Tanzania, to the northwest of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, and is bordered to the north by the Kenyan border, where it is continuous with the Maasai Mara National Reserve. It covers 14,750 km2 of grassland plains, savanna, riverine forest, and woodlands, and is usually described as divided into three regions: Serengeti plains (the almost treeless grassland of the south), Western corridor (the Grumeti River and its gallery forests), and Northern Serengeti (open woodlands and hills).

3074 Elephants in Serengeti National Park

The Maasai people had been grazing their livestock in the open plains of eastern Mara Region, which they named "endless plains", for around 200 years when the first European explorer visited the area in 1892. The name Serengeti is an approximation of the word used by the Maasai to describe the area, siringet, which means "the place where the land runs on forever". The park was established in 1951, and in 1959 the residents Maasai were evicted from there by the British, being moved to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area.

3081 Black rhinoceros in Serengeti National Park

The remarkable spatial-temporal gradient in abiotic factors such as rainfall, temperature, topography and geology, soils and drainage systems in park manifests in a wide variety of aquatic and terrestrial habitats. The combination of volcanic soils combined with the ecological impact of the migration results in one of the most productive ecosystems on earth, sustaining the largest number of ungulates and the highest concentration of large predators in the world. The biological diversity of the park is very high with at least four globally threatened or endangered animal species: black rhinoceros, elephant, wild dog, and cheetah.

The Serengeti plains are famous for the largest remaining unaltered animal migration in the world (Great Migration) where over one million wildebeest plus hundreds of thousands of other ungulates engage in a 1,000 km long annual circular trek, determined by the availability of grazing, spanning the two adjacent countries of Kenya and Tanzania. The Park also hosts one of the largest and most diverse large predator-prey interactions worldwide, providing a particularly impressive aesthetic experience.

About the stamp
The stamp is part of the series Tourist Attractions, about which I wrote here.

References
Serengeti National Park - UNESCO official website
Serengeti National Park - Wikipedia

Sender 3057, 3074, 3081: Ahmed Abbas Maswood (direct swap)
Sent from Dar es Salaam (Dar es Salaam / Tanzania), on 27.04.2017 

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