Serengeti Migration

Every one who has a chance to see nearly two million animals on the move has
been touched by the magic of this place. What is it that gets under our skin? – the
urgency of the movement of the wildebeest ?– the wide-open plains? – the African
light? Or maybe it is the fact that we all come from here not such a long time ago
and our deepest unconsciousness remembers the time, 6000 generations ago when
we all lived in  Olduvai? Or maybe it is just the sheer numbers of the migrating
animals as they move in the world’s last surviving great migration.
Today more animals move through the Serengeti plains and woodlands than the
Grzimek’s dreamed about. At least for the time being, their fears have not come
true and the Serengeti lives as a true dynamic ecosystem, defined by the long lines
of the wildebeest trek.



Even so the migration of the wildebeest defines the ecosystem, surprisingly little is
known about the gnu (Connochaetes  taurinus)  itself and its wanderlust. The two
Grzimek’s were the first ones to try and assess their numbers and the routes. Never
before where so many wild animals counted in such a remote wilderness so the
Grzimek’s came up with a new idea and brought in the first light aircraft to be used
for monitoring and wildlife management, a move that changed conservation in
Africa. By dividing the Serengeti into counting blocks they counted 99,481
Wildebeests in the Serengeti in 1958. The Frankfurt Zoological Society with
Serengeti Wildlife Research Institute refined the original counting method and today
vertical aerial cameras and high resolution video are used for counting the
wildebeest.