Amboseli National Park
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Amboseli National Park
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 Amboseli National Park, with Kilimanjaro in the background |
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| location |
Kajiado County Kenya
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| surface | 392 km² |
| WDPA ID | 758 |
| Geographical location | 2 ° 38 ' S , 37 ° 15' E |
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| Setup date | 1974 |
| administration | Kenya Wildlife Service , Olkejuado District Administration and the Maasai community |
The Amboseli National Park is a national park in southwest Kenya , right on the border with Tanzania .
description
The owners of the surrounding land are Maasai , who traditionally do not tolerate foreign hunters in their territory; The animal reserve has therefore largely been spared from poachers. For example, a population of African elephants has been preserved here whose age structure and generation structure have remained undistorted. There are therefore also old cows and bulls among the approximately 800 elephants, so that the rich and complex social behavior of the elephants can be observed. The only 390 square kilometer Amboseli Park, which is monitored by rangers and scientists all year round, is therefore home to the Amboseli Elephant Research Project , which has been studying the social behavior, age structure and population dynamics of African elephants since 1972.
The elephants are very local and only leave the Amboseli basin at the edges. In the east there are contacts with conspecifics from the Tsavo West National Park , but the groups keep separating. Occasionally, conspecifics come from the slopes of Kilimanjaro to Amboseli National Park.
The Maasai water their ever growing herds of cattle in Amboseli National Park, which affects the elephant population. A water pipeline to the north was not accepted, but technical deficiencies could not be permanently eliminated.
From Amboseli National Park, which is around 1,200 m above sea level, you have a direct view of the highest mountain in Africa, the Kibo in the Kilimanjaro massif (5,895 m). The mountain itself is in Tanzania, but determines the weather, especially the rainy days of the Kenyan National Park at its feet.
The landscape of this national park is characterized by gray dust containing soda . Acacia forests , swamps and open savannah alternate and provide a home for many large game species. Here are wildebeests , zebras , Grant and Thomson's gazelles , impalas , giraffes gazelles , gemsbok and some black rhino before. Predators include lions , cheetahs , hyenas , African wild dogs and two types of jackals . In the center of the Amboseli National Park there are palm thickets. Sour grasses, papyrus , rushes , salty bushes and yellow-bark acacias grow around the numerous swamps that are fed by Kilimanjaro and represent very abundant water resources in spite of the fact that the water resources change with the seasons and from year to year . The large, alkaline Amboseli Lake (Lake Amboseli), which gave the national park its name, covers around a third of the park area, but is only completely filled with water during the season. There is a channel-like connection between the swamps in the southern part of the park and Lake Amboseli.
In the park center there are some safari guesthouses with a high standard. The park also has a place to camp.
Access is via the gates Namanga Gate in the northwest, Lembeiboti Gate in the north and Kimana Gate in the east. The national park also has a runway for airplanes.
National park landing strip
literature
- Wally and Horst Hagen: The African national parks as habitats for elephants . In: Vitus B. Dröscher (1990): Save the Elephants of Africa (pp. 223–225)
Web links
Individual evidence