Amboseli-Nationalpark
IUCN Category II - National Park
Amboseli National Park, Mount Kilimanjaro in the background
The Amboseli National Park is a national park located in southwestern Kenya, on the border with Tanzania.
The owners of the surrounding countryside are Maasai who traditionally tolerate no foreign fighters in their territory; the game reserve has remained so largely spared from poachers. So here a population of African elephants could get, for example, their age structure and generation clusters have remained undistorted. Among the approximately 800 elephants, therefore, are also old cows and bulls, so that the rich can be observed and complex social behavior of elephants. The only 390 square kilometers, Amboseli Park, which is monitored by game wardens and scientists throughout the year, therefore, is home to the Amboseli Elephant Research Project, which has been studied since 1972, the social behavior, the age structure and population dynamics of African elephants.
The elephants are very sedentary and leave the Amboseli Basin only at the edges. In the east there are contacts with conspecifics from the Tsavo West National Park, however, the groups split up again and again. Occasionally, conspecifics from the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro in Amboseli National Park.
The Maasai watering their ever growing herds of cattle in the Amboseli National Park, which the elephant population affected. A water pipeline to the north was not adopted, however, could not be eliminated permanently and technical deficiencies.
From Amboseli National Park, which is about 1,200 m above sea level, you have direct view of the maximum peak in Africa, in the Kibo Kilimanjaro ( 5,895 m). The mountain itself is located in Tanzania, but certainly the weather, especially the rainy days of the Kenyan National Parks at his feet.
The landscape of this National Park is characterized by sodahaltigem gray dust. Acacia forests, swamps and open savannah alternate and offer many big game species a home. Here wildebeest, zebra, Grant 's gazelle and Thomson, impala, giraffes, gazelles, goats and spit some black rhinos occur. At predators there are lions, cheetahs, hyenas, African wild dogs and two jackal species. In the center of Amboseli National Park there are palm thickets. To the numerous swamps that are fed from Kilimanjaro and despite changing both with the seasons and from year to year extension represent very rich water resources, grow sour grasses, papyrus, rushes, salt contract terminates, bushes and yellow bark acacias. The large alkaline lake Amboseli ( Amboseli Lake ), the National Park its name, covering about one third of the park area, but only seasonally completely filled with water. There is a channel-like connection between the swamps in the southern part of the park and the Amboseli Lake.
In the park center, there are some safari guest houses with high standard. In addition, the park has a place to camp.
Access is possible through the gates Namanga Gate in the northwest, Lembeiboti gate in the north and Kimana Gate in the east. In addition, the National Park has a landing strip for airplanes.