Welcome to Maasai Mara National Reserve
Maasai Mara national reserve is one of the key popular tourism points in Kenya, its located in the South-western Kenya along the Great Rift Valley area in Norok county Kenya adjacent to Serengeti national park of Tanzania all around Mara Region. The Reserve was named in honor of the ancestral inhabitants the Maasai people who described the area as Mara meaning spotted circles of trees, savanna, scrub and cloud shadows of the area. Masai Mara National Reserve was established in 1961 as a wildlife sanctuary covering a small area of only 520 square kilometers of the current Mara Triangle. In the same year the reserve was extended to the East to cover around 1,821 square Kilometers, its at this point that it was converted in to a game reserve under the new management of the local community of Narok County Council. Masai mara in 1974 then acquired national reserve status and some part of the land measuring 159 km2 was returned to the locals, in 1976 more deduction was done to the park totaling to 162 square kilometers reducing the total area of the park to 1510 square kilometers by 1984.
In 1994, Trans Mara County Council was formed and this lead to the division of the management of the park between Narok County Council and the new council. To further complicate but a good move that in 2001, another not-for-profit Mara Conservancy was formed and took over the management of the reserve. Masai Mara National game Reserve is bordered by Siria escarpment in the West, Serengeti in the south and Maasai pastoral ranches on the North, East and West. The park has Masai Mara River and Talek River as key draining rivers for the park. The vegetation of the park is mostly open savannah grassland with some seasonal riverlets, some doted acacia trees. The reserve is most popular for the annually great migration where millions of wildebeest cross the Mara River under the survival of the fittest besides the big Nile crocodiles, predators like Lions, leopards and others. You can see all the big five in Masai Mara those are Elephants, Leopards, Lions, Buffalos and Rhinos with the highest number of black rhinos in Africa.
