The name 'Serengeti' comes from the Maasai language and appropriately means an 'extended place'. The National Park is as big as Northern Ireland, but its ecosystem, which includes the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, the Maswa Game Reserve and the Maasai Mara Game reserve (in Kenya), is roughly the size of Kuwait.
It lies between the shores of Lake Victoria in the west, Lake Eyasi in the south, and the Great Rift Valley to the east. As such it offers the most complex and least disturbed ecosystem on earth. A unique combination of diverse habitats enables it to support more than 30species of large herbivores and nearly 500 species of birds. Its landscape, originally formed by volcanic activity, has been sculpted by the concerted action of wind, rain and sun. It now varies from open grass plains in the south, savanna with scattered acacia trees in the center, hilly, wooded grassland in north, to extensive woodland and black clay plains to the west. Small rivers, lakes and swamps are scattered throughout. Rising in the southeast, there are the great volcanic massifs and craters of the Ngorongoro Highlands.
