Safari to Mkomazi

home to some very important conservation projects

At 3234 square kilometres, Mkomazi is a substantial conservation area adjoining the much larger Tsavo West reserve across the border in Kenya.

It’s a surprisingly arid area, with very low wildlife densities.

The park is best known for its pioneering conservation projects, notably those involving wild-dogs and black rhinos.

The area experiences very low visitor numbers and therefore feels distinctly off-the-beaten-track.

Wildlife

Mkomazi has very low wildlife densities. This is a surprisingly arid area, more similar in character to Samburu further north in Kenya than the more fertile reserves of Tanzania North.

The area is home to a number of species which you are unlikely to see elsewhere in Tanzania, notably gerenuks and lesser kudus, plus a handful of unusual bird species.

But wildlife here is undeniably scarce. Rarely have we spent so many hours finding so few sightings, it really can be quite soul destroying.

How much this dearth of animals is also due to hunting and poaching we simply don’t know. Of course the wildlife is not very habituated to vehicles around here, so maybe all the animals were simply better than usual at hiding.

Conservation

It might be worth starting by mentioning that Mkomazi has a rather controversial history, with major evictions of pastoral people having taken place at various intervals.

The local people have long viewed this area as a place which has been stolen from them by the government.

The upgrading of the reserve to national park status in 2008 seems to have put an end to any chance of a mixed-use solution, but the discontent among locals remains. With visitor numbers remaining so low, it’s hard to see how any sizable benefit can be derived from the reserve for the local people.

But now the area is a national park, it should start to reap the benefits of improved infrastructure and anti-poaching operations. There’s a good deal of potential here, we certainly look forward to being able to recommend it to more people and help the area become self-sustaining.

Mkomazi is best known for its pioneering conservation projects, led by Tony Fitzjohn and the George Adamson Wildlife Preservation Trust, who’ve been working hard to restore the area to its former glory since pastoralists were removed back in the 1980’s.

Of greatest note are the breeding projects which have been established for wild-dogs and black rhinos, two of the area’s most threatened animals.

Unfortunately these wild-dog and rhino conservation projects are extremely difficult to access. We’ve made repeated attempts to gain permission for our guests to visit, confident that a significant income could be generated by this means, but we’ve never made any progress.

We’ve even offered to make considerable charitable donations to the projects, but even these approaches seem to have fallen on deaf ears.

It seems that the people in charge are more concerned about keeping the projects under wraps rather than using them to promote much-needed tourism into the reserve.

If we could just get the wild-dog and rhino breeding projects to open up to high-end guests, have one of the leading safari companies establish a camp here and get a scheduled air service between here and the Serengeti started up, then we might really help to get this show on the road.

In the meantime Mkomazi remains the kind of place which will be sought out only by real safari enthusiasts, who have been everywhere else and are interested in discovering more about this particular corner of the country.

We love going to remote and little-visited areas, but this one is particularly tricky to include in trips.

Mkomazi is inconveniently located to the east of Kilimanjaro International Airport, when most of the other main areas of interest lie in the Serengeti region to the west.

On the rare occasion we have included Mkomazi in trips, we usually do so when connecting Serengeti to the beach areas of the north coast, around Pangani, in which case the reserve lies along the route. However, there are now light aircraft services between Serengeti and Pangani, very few people want to spend several days driving the route.

very rarely included in high quality safaris