Mkomazi National Park is a magnificent national park in northern Tanzania. Remote and originally difficult to reach, it was founded in 1951. It never received the needed financial support like the other parks. And its true importance was only recognized in 1989.
Mkomazi National Park is easily accessible and is a truly spectacular wilderness! In the northwest, you can see Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain. And in the south the Pare and Usambara mountains create a dramatic backdrop. To the north, Kenya’s Tsavo National Park borders the Mkomazi National Park. These two parks form one of the largest and most important protected ecosystems. They provide a common base for herds of elephants, oryx and zebras. Mkomazi is located on the southern tip of the Sahel. It has a classic arid area with gray-green nyika bush, old baobab trees, and isolated rocky hills. In other places the scrub seas give way to savannah forests with umbrella acacias and mbugas – flat grassland valleys.
Mkomazi national park has a thinly populated and quite skittish wildlife. It is typical for the dry landscape: giraffes, antelopes, small kudu, impala and Grant’s gazelle. They share the park with elephants, buffalo and numerous predators, including lion, leopard and cheetah. And with some luck you can also spot other animals like dik diks, zebras, wildebeests, eland and topi regularly on a game drive. Visitors can see a total of 78 species of recorded mammals living here.