National Geographic USA 12.2021

For thousands of years
wildebeests have
threaded across the
plains of East Africa.
The herds have no
natural leader, but
trails help guide
them—like a group
memory of previous
treks. In their annual
journey they form
one megaherd, sur-
rounded by smaller
ones that split off to
find good grazing.

Driven by hunger and
a primal urge to move
forward, the wilde-
beests lope along,
shoulder to shoulder,
haunch to haunch.
Their muscles are so
efficient that they can
travel for up to five
days without stopping
to drink. The scent
of a lion or cheetah,
however, can scatter
the herd in an instant.



AN INTRICATE

WEB OF LIFE

BY PAGE

PAU L A K A H U M B U NO. 46

DATE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

DEC. 2021 WELCOME TO EARTH

IN THE POPULAR from the Maa word for “endless plain”—is deceptive. The
Serengeti is many landscapes, including savanna, woodland,
I imagination, the and riverine forests.
Serengeti ecosystem
is an ancient African It’s a place like no other on the planet, with the last thriving
landscape of sweep- populations of some animals. And it’s a place where humans
ing golden plains, unchanged for have lived in balance with animals since the beginnings of our
eons. Towering giraffes move grace- species. But some of the animals that we have come to know
fully in step. Elephant herds wade so much about—and many others that remain mysteries—are
through waves of grasses. Lions at risk of disappearing as we humans increasingly lay claim to
chase down spiral-horned antelope their habitats and heat the climate.
in gory hunts. Zigzagging lines of
wildebeests and zebras are perpet- For scientists like me, the Serengeti is both a time capsule
ually on the move. And the people of an immemorial age and a bellwether for our future. As
who live in the Serengeti, the Maa- comforting as it may be to see it through familiar images and
sai and others, if they are acknowl- story lines, we need to understand it as an intricate web of life
edged at all, are generally portrayed that depends on landscapes well beyond the parks, reserves,
as exotic figures clinging stubbornly and conservancies we’ve set aside.
to archaic pastoral traditions.
These representations bear some Like most East Africans, I never visited the Serengeti as a
likeness to the actual place, but they child. It was for tourists, a place seen by us as out of reach and
fail to capture the complexity of a irrelevant to our lives. But unlike many, I was lucky, even as a
vast ecosystem that ranges from child growing up in Nairobi in the 1970s, to see some of Kenya’s
northern Tanzania to southwestern wildlife in the wild. To keep order in the house, my mother
Kenya and is home to thousands of would lock me and my brother out and tell us not to come
plant and animal species. Even the home until dinnertime. We’d explore the nearby forest, climb
name, Serengeti—believed to come trees, swim rivers, wade through swamps. One day we spotted
a cute animal that looked like a gigantic guinea pig, way up in
a fig tree. A neighbor pulled up, rolled down the window, and

explained that it was a hyrax and that it was a distant relative more than a million wildebeests on
of the elephant, a fact that blew our little minds. the banks of the Mara River seems
proof the migration is robust, but
Discovering our fascination with animals, he told us to the long-term trends tell a different
bring him any we could catch alive, and he’d tell us about story. Nationwide, large mammal
them. We brought him snakes, lizards, birds, frogs, mice, populations have plummeted.
and, once, a giant pouched rat, which I was sure was a new
discovery. This man of infinite patience was Richard Leakey, Jackson Looseyia, a Maasai tour
the paleoanthropologist, then the director of the National operator and cohost of the TV show
Museum of Kenya. Big Cat Tales, told me that within
the past decade he and his fellow
Several years later, when I was 15, I somehow persuaded my guides have noticed 10 species that
parents to let me join some students on a scientific expedition have disappeared or almost dis-
across northern Kenya, a remotely inhabited place where appeared: greater kudu, common
it was possible to die from thirst, banditry, or lions. For an duiker, bushbuck, bushpig, giant
entire month we were mostly on our own, happily cataloging forest hog, oribi, colobus monkey,
the plants and creatures we saw. This experience forged a sable antelope, roan antelope, and,
deep desire to spend my life immersed in nature. A few years of course, black rhino. Most of these
later, when my mother sent me off to secretarial school, I ran animals aren’t at the top of tourist
away and went to see Leakey. He found me an internship that lists but are crucial barometers for
launched me toward my dream of becoming a ranger. the health of the ecosystem.

I F I N A L LY V I S I T E D T H E S E R E N G E T I in my 20s, In the 1990s we saw the collapse
of the wildebeest migration in
I when I was working for the Kenya Wildlife Ser- the Athi-Kaputiei ecosystem just
vice. Young and naive, I once asked American south of Nairobi. We didn’t even
scientists in the Masai Mara National Reserve realize what was happening until
whether they had any Kenyans on their team. it was too late. Today the same
“Yes, of course,” they said, “our driver and our cook.” thing appears to be unfolding on
This flouted research permit rules, but back in Nairobi my a grander scale in the Serengeti,
boss just shrugged. Nobody expected Africans to do research but now we know what’s happen-
in the bush. Despite such attitudes, I went on to earn a doctor- ing. And the threat is magnified by
ate in ecology and evolutionary biology. I loved working as a climate change. Leakey told me
scientist, but some years ago, I realized that all I cherished was he fears that unless we immedi-
under grave threat. So I switched my focus to conservation. ately address this at a global level,
One of my projects is a documentary series called Wildlife we will lose most of our wildlife
Warriors, produced by Kenyans for a Kenyan audience, that within our lifetime.
highlights our countrymen and countrywomen—scientists or
not—who seek to protect our animals. When I first pitched the If there is any environment that
idea, people said Kenyans wouldn’t watch. But the response could withstand the onslaught of
has been overwhelming. Last year 51 percent of the country warming, it would be the Serengeti
tuned in, and we’ve received emails and letters of support, as ecosystem—a place of astonishing
well as suggestions for new subjects, from viewers of all ages. resilience. I believe we can defend
The message is clear: Kenyans care about their wildlife. this wilderness and preserve it for
Everyone needs to care because the stakes are high. The future generations, but that will not
wildebeest migration, which travels a circular path through the happen unless ordinary Kenyans
Serengeti ecosystem, is under pressure. The annual arrival of and Tanzanians demand it. j

T H E N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C S O C I ET Y is committed to

illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world.
Since 2010 we have supported 2021 Rolex National Geographic
Explorer of the Year Paula Kahumbu’s work protecting species
in East Africa. Through the Wyss Campaign for Nature, we
funded the fieldwork of Explorer Charlie Hamilton James,
who spent more than two years photographing the people
and animals in the greater Serengeti ecosystem.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOE MCKENDRY



Hungry predators lurk
nearby, so zebras stick
close to wildebeests,
which are preferred
prey. Once on the
northern plains, the
two herbivores tend
to seek out different
grazing areas. Zebras
need more food, pre-
ferring to graze on
taller grasses with
their long front teeth.



Migrating wildebeests
bring a whole ecosystem
along with them. Cattle
egrets, for example, join
grazing wildebeests in
Tanzania. They hover
close by, or even perch
on the wildebeests’
backs, waiting for them
to kick up a smorgas-
bord of insects from
the ground.

Massive wildebeest
deaths provide a
feast for crocodiles
and vultures in the
Mara River. In a single
day 6,000 to 9,000
wildebeests—poor
swimmers and easily
confused—might
trample one another
and drown in the
fast-flowing current.



Wildebeests traverse
the Mara River fre-
quently at a spot below
Lookout Hill in Kenya.
“This is the classic shot
of a crossing,” says
photographer Charlie
Hamilton James, but
it’s not the whole pic-
ture. Turn the camera
around, and tourists
on safari can be seen
parked everywhere.



BY PAGE

PETER GWIN NO. 58

DATE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

DEC. 2021 WELCOME TO EARTH

THE UNLIKELY

KIN

THE SERENGETI’S MOST IMPORTANT
ANIMAL IS THE WILDEBEEST, AN
AWKWARD-LOOKING ANTELOPE
WHOSE AGE-OLD MIGRATION DRIVES
A COMPLEX CIRCLE OF LIFE.

T H E L I N E A P P E A R E D on the

T horizon as a gray thread
on a pale green quilt, but
as the plane flew closer, it
became a column of a few hundred

G animals, winding across the plain.
“Wildebeest,” Charlie shouted over
the drone of the engine. “It’s a small
group.” We were north of Tanzania’s
Ngorongoro Crater, and since it was
March, we knew the wildebeests would
soon be moving northwest, up through
Serengeti National Park and into Kenya.
And there they were, in a perfectly
straight, nose-to-tail convoy. I could
make out their curved horns and long
heads nodding up and down as they
trudged through the morning sun.
Several calves pressed against their
mothers’ flanks.
For thousands of years, wildebeest
herds have journeyed through the

greater Serengeti ecosystem in a that lay ahead, you’d be right to conclude many of the herd
clockwise circuit—each animal were doomed. They’d be at the mercy of fickle weather
meandering roughly 1,750 miles, patterns, frequently correcting course and traveling long
the distance from Portland, Maine, stretches to find fresh grazing. They would be marauded
to Key West, Florida—following the endlessly by predators. In recent years, they’d also had to
rains, grazing on the grasses, fertiliz- contend with human impediments—fences built to protect
ing the land, becoming food for the crops and cattle—and competition from burgeoning flocks
predators. And here, treading the of sheep and goats.
timeless trail of its ancestors, this
herd was headed northwest. But perhaps the most daunting test would be an age-old
one: the Mara River, which the animals would have to cross
But wait, they weren’t headed to reach the best grazing in Kenya’s Masai Mara National
northwest. Reserve and then again when returning to Tanzania. Char-
lie, who’s been filming and photographing in the Serengeti
“Why are they going south?” I for more than two decades, has seen dozens of crossings and
shouted to Charlie. watched thousands of wildebeests blithely follow each other
to their death. “I was here for it last year, and hundreds of
“Who bloody knows?” he replied. carcasses were piled up on the banks and floating in the river,”
“They’re looking for grass. Not he told me. “It’s a bloody nightmare.”
much to eat here.”
Many of the young and weak are trampled as the herds
I’d come to Tanzania to see the chaotically scramble down muddy, clifflike banks and plunge
great migration of wildebeests and into the river. Hundreds drown or are dragged under the
joined up with Charlie Hamilton rushing waters by the Mara’s plentiful crocodiles. And of
James, who’d been documenting those wildebeests that do make it to the far bank, scores are
their trek for two years. We’d taken promptly chased down by waiting lions and hyenas.
off from Arusha with Mount Kili-
manjaro looming on the horizon. Charlie told me about a time when he’d seen a survivor of
The land had unfolded as a sea of one harrowing crossing inexplicably change its mind a few
luxuriant green hues, a patchwork of minutes later and head back through the same gantlet, only
coffee farms and stands of dense for- to die trying to return to the place it had just left. “There’s
est, but after we flew over the crater, clearly not a lot going on in there,” he said.
the terrain gave way to wide plains,
formed by ancient lava flows over- And that’s the great conundrum of the wildebeest: Their
laid with fertile layers of ash from annual migration is an exquisite example of nature’s elabo-
nearby volcanoes. rate clockwork. But observed up close, they’re funny-looking,
enigmatic creatures that can seem hopelessly dim-witted.
Just a month earlier the area
below us had been a carpet of highly ARE WILDEBEESTS
nutritious grasses, but the rains STUPID?
had ended, and now, in practically
every direction, the ground looked ‘NO ANIMALS
parched, only a whisper of grass. ARE STUPID.
The column of wildebeests seemed SOME ARE SMARTER
like a lost, wandering tribe caught THAN OTHERS.’
out in the open, an easy target for a
lion pride or a family of hyenas. —EKAI EKALALE, KENYAN GUIDE

Then I noticed one wildebeest
step out of the line. It looked around
and started in the opposite direc-
tion, as if it had concluded the group
was heading the wrong way and had
decided to strike out on its own. For
a solitary creature, this seemed like
certain death. The herd ignored the
rebel and ambled on. That wilde-
beest, I thought, is doomed.

Considering the obstacle course

STORY PAGE

T H E U N L I K E LY K I N G NO. 61

DATE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

DEC. 2021 WELCOME TO EARTH

And yet for millennia, they’ve inhabited this complicated, upper body. This front-loaded build
unforgiving landscape. I thought about the lone wildebeest balanced atop spindly legs gives the
striking out on its own and couldn’t help but wonder: How animal an ungainly stride.
has this improbable species survived?
And then there’s the incessant,
J U S T A F T E R S U N R I S E in the Masai Mara, I’m mind-numbing noise it makes—a
combination of a croak and a
J wrapped in an olkarasha—the plaid cloth the moo—which prompted early Afri-
Maasai traditionally wear as a cloak—to ward can nomads to name it the “gnu”
off the chill and drinking coffee out of a ther- (guh-new) for the sound it made.
mos with Ekai Ekalale, a Kenyan guide. We’re
watching some wildebeests grazing in front of our Land The result is a creature so weird
Rover. They’re close enough that we can hear them chewing but also so unassuming that when
mouthfuls of grass. An hour before, we’d seen a pair of lion- Dutch settlers first laid eyes on it,
esses kill a buffalo calf, only to have a pack of hyenas steal they gave it one of the least imagi-
it. That was less than a mile away, and this group must have native names in the animal lexicon,
heard the whoops and frenzied shrieks of the hyenas, but wild beast. So how did nature come
the wildebeests seem oblivious to any danger. They munch up with this Frankenstein of the
contentedly, batting their large ears and swishing their tails animal kingdom?
to shoo small clouds of flies.
I ask Ekai if he thinks wildebeests are stupid. “No animals To find out, I’d called Anna
are stupid,” he says. “Some are smarter than others.” But he Estes, an ecologist at Carleton
notes I’m not the first to raise this question. Wildebeests College who works in Tanzania.
have perplexed the people who’ve lived closest to them for “Let me stop you right there,” she
centuries, the Maasai and other tribes in the region. One said. “My dad would take it per-
local folktale holds that the wildebeest was created using sonally if anyone would impugn
parts left over from other animals. “It was given the head of the wildebeest.” I called Estes
a warthog, the neck of a buffalo, stripes from a zebra, and because her father, wildlife biolo-
the tail of a giraffe,” Ekai tells me. There are many versions gist Richard Estes, wrote The Gnu’s
of this myth, including one in which the wildebeest gets the World, a detailed life history of the
brain of a flea. wildebeest and a comprehensive
Myth though it may be, it seems an apt description. Wilde- counterargument to all the jokes.
beests do appear awkward and simpleminded. They are mem- Richard, who started his research
bers of the antelope family, which is hard to believe when in 1962, was one of the first scien-
you look at them alongside their cousins—the sleek impala tists to study the behavior of the
or the dainty yet acrobatic Thomson’s gazelle. Their diminu- white-bearded wildebeest of the
tive horns and tiny eyes both seem several sizes too small for Serengeti. Anna grew up bouncing
their extra-long faces, which are exaggerated by long, shaggy around in a battered Land Cruiser,
beards. And their bodies look uncomfortably unbalanced, with following the herds as her father
big humps behind their shoulders that give way to sloping observed them mating, giving
hindquarters—like a weight lifter who’d focused only on his birth, fending off predators, and
yes, dying in great numbers. Her
father retired a few years ago, and

WAYS OF THE WILDEBEEST Residents do not
join the broader
migration.

Driven by a constant search for food, 1.3 million wilde- E ara
beests chase the rains across the greater Serengeti N Resident
ecosystem every year. The migration stretches from the G wildebeests
fertile short-grass plains of the southeast to the wood- E
lands and savanna of the north when rainfall gets scarce. T Loita Plains
IM
PLAINMASAITalek
MARA

ASIA Ma r a NATIONAL
RESERVE

AFRICA 3 Conservancies
in Kenya prioritize
MAP KENYA Path of D RY- S E A S O N wildlife conservation
AREA tracked RANGE and sustainable
wildebeest land use.
TANZANIA

Mugumu TANKZEANNYIAA

Buffer zones allow IKONA Loliondo
WILDLIFE
regulated agriculture and MANAGEMENT IKORONGO LOLIONDO
game hunting in Tanzania. GAME

GRUMETI AREA GAME CONTROLLED
RESERVE AREA
Ndabaka Grumeti GAME Fort Ikoma
Plains Robanda
RESERVE
Victoria KIJERESHI
Lake Lamadi Orangi

GAME RESERVE Dutwa Musabi Plains

Plains S E R E N G E T I N A T I O N A L PA R K

2 Serengeti N.P. Serengeti
Headquarters Research
Ndoha Center
Plains
G R E AT Mbala Piaya
M I G R AT I O N

1 The rainy season brings geti Salei
nutrient-rich grasses that feed Plains

migrant wildebeests. They

calve while food is plentiful. R
E
2 When the rains and grasses MASWA S
dwindle, the animals must move

to the north, where there’s more

competition for less food. Olduvai Gorge Olduvai
Gorge
3 In the dry season the Mara River GAME Museum
still provides water. But the grasses
NGORONGORO
in the north are poorer in nutrients; RESERVE CONSERVATION AREA

many wildebeests starve. 1 Ngorongoro

RA I N Y- S E A S O N Crater
RANGE
Oloirobi

Lake TAKENNZY. A MASAI Kakesio
Victoria MARA
NAT. RES.
Makao
SERENGETI MWIBA i
N.P. MAKAO WILDLIFE s
WILDLIFE RANCH a
MANAGEMENT y
e E
AREA Lak
10 mi
R A I N VA R I AT I O N 10 km
Evaporation from Lake Victoria
delivers ample moisture to the RILEY D. CHAMPINE AND MATTHEW W. CHWASTYK, NGM STAFF
northern sectors of the Serengeti. SOURCES: GRANT HOPCRAFT, THOMAS MORRISON,
In the south, volcanic peaks create AND CALLUM BUCHANAN, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW;
a “rain shadow” that reduces rain- JARED STABACH, SMITHSONIAN CONSERVATION BIOLOGY
fall, parching the southern plains. INSTITUTE; TANZANIA NATIONAL PARKS; TANZANIA
WILDLIFE RESEARCH INSTITUTE; KENYA WILDLIFE SERVICE
Average annual rainfall (inches)
12 72

Estes has continued studying the ecology of the Serengeti. they’re able to consume only a tiny
Think of it this way, she suggested: One measure of evolu- fraction, and within a few weeks
the calves and adults have begun
tionary success is population. In this sense, the wildebeest, to move to the next stop, their num-
at upwards of 1.3 million, is by far the most triumphant large bers swollen by nearly a third.
mammal in the Serengeti. Elephants, with their vaunted
intelligence and unchallenged brawn, number only around After speaking with Anna Estes,
8,500; lions, the so-called kings of the plain, a paltry 3,000. I went looking for other examples
The closest competitors are Thomson’s gazelles and zebras— of ingenious wildebeest behavior.
at a few hundred thousand each—and both, by the way, fol-
low the wildebeest. I learned that wildebeests always
give birth in broad daylight, which
This success, she noted, is directly connected to their might seem to make them more
strange-looking body parts, which are adaptations that have vulnerable, except lions and hye-
been finely tuned over a million years to help them cover nas generally hunt between dusk
enormous distances and take full advantage of the unique and dawn. And scent glands in their
Serengeti ecosystem. The small horns—puny compared hooves leave a trail of hormones that
with the African buffalo’s massive horn helmets—mean helps the animals find their way.
less weight to carry while walking long distances or swim-
ming across rivers, and they’re less likely to get tangled in Then I came across an example
dense brush. The flat muzzles allow lawnmower-like graz- that put me back in the plane with
ing. The sloping backside actually promotes a highly effi- Charlie, recalling the mystery of the
cient gait, and their ankles have a pogo stick–like elasticity wildebeest that seemed to strike
that allows them to bounce when they run—both help save out on its own. If a mother is sepa-
energy during the long migration. And clumsy looking or rated from her calf, I learned, she’ll
not, they can accelerate to 50 miles an hour, fast enough to pull out of the column and head the
elude hyenas and outpace lions. They also are very good at opposite way—to the back of the
sensing where rain is falling and heading in the direction of line, where calves naturally gather
distant thunderstorms, which by the time the herd arrives when they’re lost.
will have produced new grass.
B E F O R E I L E F T for the
But the most impressive wildebeest adaptation is its strategy
for bringing the next generation into the world. Starting in late B Serengeti, I read
January, herds gather on the same plains Charlie and I flew about a young ecol-
over, when they’re still lush with grass fed by seasonal rains ogist who forever
and the nutrient-rich volcanic soil. The wildebeest, unlike changed the way sci-
many other antelope species, doesn’t hide its young, and entists view the wildebeest. Tony
pregnant females give birth all at once out in the open. Some Sinclair had grown up in Tanzania,
500,000 wildebeest calves are born over three weeks, roughly studied zoology at Oxford, and then
24,000 a day. Seven minutes after emerging from the womb, a spent more than a decade counting
calf is standing, and within 24 hours it can run with its mother. the Serengeti’s animal populations.
In April 1982 he’d traveled to South
Lions, hyenas, and other predators are primed for this Africa for a gathering of conserva-
annual feast and glut themselves on the newborns, but tionists in Pretoria, where he’d

STORY PAGE

T H E U N L I K E LY K I N G NO. 63

DATE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

DEC. 2021 WELCOME TO EARTH

taken the podium to announce A POPULATION SURGE
astonishing news: He and another
ecologist, Mike Norton-Griffiths, The number of wildebeests in the
had counted the largest ungulate Serengeti grew fivefold in less than two
herd ever recorded. decades once rinderpest, a virus passed
from domestic cattle to wildlife, was
The feat of accurately calculating largely eradicated in the early 1960s.
the size of such a large migratory
herd—before the use of satellites 1.4 million
and other advanced technology—
was impressive enough, but even 260,000
more stunning was that this herd
was the Serengeti’s wildebeest 1961 1977
population.
SHAPING THE SERENGETI
Beginning in the 1890s, the
wildebeest had been decimated The sudden population uptick set off a tor-
by outbreaks of a virus known as rent of far-reaching impacts, giving scientists
rinderpest, which is related to the a rare opportunity to study the vital role
measles virus. Though it’s harmless wildebeests play in the ecosystem.
to humans, rinderpest is lethal to
domestic cattle and their wild cous- Increase
ins, including the African buffalo Decrease
and wildebeest.
More wildebeests eat more grass
An effective vaccine had been and boost predator populations.
widely administered by the early
1960s, stopping the outbreaks Predators Grass
among cattle, and the wildebeest Other herbivores
was rebounding with astounding
speed. Before the vaccine largely Less grass means less fuel Shorter grass lets
wiped out rinderpest, the Seren- for fires. Trees regener- more light and
geti’s wildebeest population was ate more easily, a boon nutrients reach
roughly 260,000. But in just 17 for many species. lower plants.
years, from 1961 to 1977, it had more
than quintupled, to 1.4 million. Sin- Grasshoppers and
clair showed me a black-and-white Thomson’s gazelles
photo he’d taken during one of his have less food
counting flights. A massive herd of available to them.
wildebeests covers the land from
horizon to horizon.

But in Pretoria, his fellow scien-
tists didn’t share his enthusiasm.
“What I got was people standing
up saying, ‘This is the most irre-
sponsible thing I’ve ever heard,’ ”
he recounted when we chatted over
Zoom. “ ‘What we should be doing
is killing half the population.’ ”

That was the prevailing dogma
held by many scientists in Africa
but also in places such as Yel-
lowstone, he said. They believed
wildlife populations needed to be
manipulated to stay in balance.
“They had to be controlled,” he

DIANA MARQUES, NGM STAFF. LAWSON PARKER
SOURCES: ANTHONY R.E. SINCLAIR, BIODIVERSITY RESEARCH CENTER,

NUMBERS LEVEL OFF told me, explaining this thinking.
“Otherwise they would just go crazy
After peaking in 1977, the wildebeest and destroy everything.”
population stabilized at a level the food
supply could support, about 1.3 million Sinclair wasn’t convinced. “It
animals. Their numbers can still fluctuate occurred to me that we could
with variations in annual rainfall. demonstrate why that was not the
case in the Serengeti wildebeest
1.3 million population.”

The Serengeti’s He went back to the Serengeti,
worst drought of and over the next several years,
the 20th century he and his colleagues began to
notice significant changes. The
1961 1977 1985 1995 2005 2018 first was that predator populations
were growing. This wasn’t all that
P O P U L AT I O N C O N T R O L surprising—more prey meant more
food for lions, hyenas, cheetahs,
Serengeti animals under 330 pounds typically and leopards. But Norton-Griffiths
die from predation; those heavier than that also noticed that there were fewer
threshold, from lack of food. Wildebeests, mid- fires. He and Sinclair figured out
size, attempt to avoid both threats by migrating. that the large wildebeest herd was
keeping the grass shorter, so fires
Fewest Deaths due Most didn’t burn as frequently or as hot,
to predation Oribi which allowed trees to grow. Sud-
Body denly, large areas that had been
weight grassland for nearly a century were
being reforested.
220 lbs Migrant wildebeests are Impala
smaller than resident ones Topi More trees meant more insects,
and more agile. Their risk more birds, and more animals that
of predation is lowered by eat the leaves of trees, including
moving in large groups. giraffes and elephants. And as the
wildebeests traveled, they spread
330 lbs Zebra their dung, improving the soils and
Buffalo producing more grass for them-
Resident wildebeests selves and other species. Elephant
Giraffe are larger and don’t populations grew, butterflies pro-
2,200 lbs liferated, even lowly dung beetle
Rhino migrate. These herds species flourished.
must share territory year-
Hippo Sinclair realized the Serengeti
Elephant round with predators. was being transformed into a place
that few, if any, living humans could
22,000 lbs remember. And the driver for this
change was the humble wilde-
UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA; GRANT HOPCRAFT AND THOMAS MORRISON, beest. At the time, the concept of a
UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW; SEAN CARROLL, THE SERENGETI RULES, 2016 keystone species—an animal that
was singularly crucial to the struc-
ture and health of an ecosystem—
was relatively new. Until then, all
the identified keystone species
had been top predators. But in the
Serengeti, the lion wasn’t king; its
prey was.

To put it bluntly, Sinclair told
me, “there’s no Serengeti, at least

When foreign travel
fell during the COVID-
19 pandemic, tourist
facilities lowered prices,
giving more Kenyans a
look at the migration in
the Masai Mara. “The
result was brilliant,” says
photographer Charlie
Hamilton James. “Many
Kenyans rarely have a
chance to see their own
wildlife, their heritage.”



STORY PAGE

T H E U N L I K E LY K I N G NO. 68

DATE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

DEC. 2021 WELCOME TO EARTH

not one we’d recognize, without skin and around its organs, even some of its muscle tissue,
the wildebeest.” and had finally dipped into the emergency reserves in its
bones. At that point, he said, “these animals are what we call
AS I DROVE across the a carcass with a pulse.” A predator may have delivered the
death blow, but only because the animal already was weak-
A plains, even when I ened by starvation.
saw no wildebeests,
I often spotted their Hopcraft’s team is also studying the hairs from a wildebeest’s
remains—clusters tail. The hairs, roughly a foot long, tell the story of the past year
of bleached ribs, disarticulated and a half of the animal’s life. Scientists slice them into tiny
vertebrae, and stark alabaster leg segments representing about two weeks’ growth each, then
bones—each identifiable by a analyze them for isotopes and hormones that reveal a wealth
nearby skull adorned with the tell- of data about the individual. “Imagine the animal is writing
tale horns. a diary every day,” Hopcraft said. “‘I’m pregnant. I’m hungry.
I’d heard that one of Sinclair’s I’m stressed. This is where I’ve been eating. This is what I’ve
protégés, Grant Hopcraft, an ecol- been eating.’ It’s telling you that information.”
ogist at the University of Glasgow,
was studying wildebeest remains— And what do these wildebeest diaries reveal? The animals
sort of a CSI: Serengeti. So I called are always desperately hungry, especially the females. “A
him up. female wildebeest is on the edge of starvation almost its
I’d assumed most of these were entire life,” Hopcraft said. “And that’s because they never
kills, but Hopcraft discounted that stop reproducing.”
notion. “People think of wilde-
beests dying from lions, hyenas, He explained that the females are either pregnant or nurs-
or crocodiles, things like that,” he ing a calf year-round, and for four months, from June to Sep-
said. “But predators account for tember, they’re doing both, all while migrating, which puts
only about 25 to 30 percent of the huge energy demands on their bodies. “That makes them
deaths among adults.” The number completely focused on consuming as much as possible of the
one cause of death? Starvation. most nutritious grasses until they’re gone,” he said. Then they
Hopcraft and his team study have to immediately figure out where the rain is falling, hurry
wildebeest bones, especially three or four miles to the next available grazing, and start
femurs, the large bones in the upper eating, competing with the million other wildebeests doing
hind legs. “One of the things we do the exact same thing. “This is the engine of the migration.”
is look at the bone marrow content,”
he said, explaining that even after I was reminded of the wildebeest that Charlie had seen run
death it still holds the animal’s last the Mara River gantlet twice in one day and asked Hopcraft
reserve of fat. if hunger would prompt an animal to ignore such obvious
If the fat content in the marrow threats. “It could,” he said. “Avoiding predators shapes some
is depleted, it tells him that the ani- of their behaviors, but starvation is the dominant force.”
mal had metabolized all the energy
stored in the layers of fat under its M M A N Y Y E A R S AG O, I booked a budget safari out
of Nairobi, and in less than an hour we found
ourselves amid a herd of wildebeests, framed
against the city’s skyline. The air smelled of

their pungent dung and was filled with their perpetual gnu-ing. Ogutu told me many of the same
The guide explained that this herd of some 20,000 would hindrances are now squeezing the
migrate to the neighboring Athi-Kaputiei Plains and back Serengeti migration as it moves
again. It was a miniature version of the great Serengeti-Mara through the Masai Mara. As he
migration, which circulated farther to the southwest. listed these—more sheep and goat
herds, more fences in Maasai com-
I mentioned this to Joseph Ogutu, and he nodded ruefully. munities, more water siphoned by
It was late in Nairobi when we connected on Zoom, and he farms—I pictured a cardiologist
pushed up his glasses and rubbed his eyes with the weariness reviewing an MRI that revealed
of a man who spends his days sorting through data that tell a blockages in a patient’s circula-
disturbing story. Ogutu, born and raised in western Kenya, is a tory system and calculating how
senior statistician at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart, much longer the heart would keep
Germany; his specialty is counting Kenya’s wildlife populations beating. The number of wildebeests
and modeling how they change over time. coming into Kenya is declining,
Ogutu said. “Those that do come
He knows the story of the Athi-Kaputiei herd all too well. In are spending up to one and a half
the early 2000s he began reconstructing the Kenyan govern- months fewer per year in the Mara
ment’s data sets for these wildebeests. “The government had than they used to.”
actually done a good job collecting data,” he said. But it was
scattered among old computer tapes, floppy disks, hard drives, If they stopped coming, it would
and documents locked in filing cabinets with missing keys. dramatically alter the ecosystem
but also the Kenyan economy, since
As he recovered the information and compared it with current thousands of foreign tourists come
figures, a distressing picture emerged: The migration had col- to the Mara to watch the spectacle.
lapsed. The herd had dwindled from roughly 30,000 in the mid-
1970s to fewer than 3,000 in 2014. The cause was attributed to a I asked Ogutu if he thought the
range of human activities—Nairobi’s sprawl, more fenced farms, trend was reversible. “The signals
expanding railroads, among them. Eventually, these encroach- from the data that I have seen and
ments choked the routes the wildebeests needed to find enough the predictions into the future do
grazing to maintain their numbers. Without the ability to move not offer much hope for optimism,”
freely, the remaining wildebeests stopped migrating. he said, “unless we can put land
aside and protect it in perpetuity
“IMAGINE THE ANIMAL for wildebeest.”
IS WRITING A DIARY
ONE OF THE LAST
EVERY DAY.
‘I’M PREGNANT. O days I was in the
Mara, Charlie, Ekai,
I’M HUNGRY. and I were driving
I’M STRESSED.’ through the savanna
IT’S TELLING YOU THAT when we spotted a young wilde-
INFORMATION.” beest by itself, galloping along the
road. Nothing seemed to be chasing
it. It was just running alone—odd
behavior for a wildebeest. We
caught up to it and drove alongside
for a bit. It ignored us, its head bob-
bing up and down, small eyes
focused on the road ahead. Where
was this animal going? What was it
thinking? At the time I thought for
sure it was doomed, but now I can
only wonder. j

—ECOLOGIST GRANT HOPCRAFT On staff since 2003, Peter Gwin is
an editor at large and co-host of
Overheard at National Geographic.

HUMAN IMPACTS ON THE HERDS ASIA

More fences, more tourist traffic, more farms siphoning off water: AFRICA
These factors aren’t the only reasons wildebeests are visiting
Kenya’s Masai Mara less often and staying a shorter time. But such MAP KENYA
human-made changes are undeniably having an impact. This region AREA
is where ungulates normally wait out the dry-season months, from
July to October. Many then chase the rains southward back into TANZANIA
Tanzania, while a smaller, resident group moves east to the Loita
Plains—a local migration experts fear may be going extinct.

Thousands of miles of fences, Road Cropland
ranging from high-power electric River Airstrip Built-up area
barriers to traditional enclosures
made from tangled branches, Tourist camp
have been installed since 2011. or lodge

OLOISUKUT

Fences in the Core parks Mara Bridge MARA
Masai Mara NORTH
study area Fully protected areas that
prohibit agriculture and hunting
GPS tracking collars help
experts document changes in Kawai
wildebeest migration patterns.
Masai Mara wildlife conservancies Mara
Tracked wildebeest
locations since 2019 Community-managed lands in Kenya
Tracked wildebeest that prioritize wildlife conservation
locations 1999-2013 and sustainable land use

Nyamongo 5 mi p ment OLORUKOTI
5 km PLAIN
Tourist-packed
Esoit a r

s c jeeps

Oloololo E that can disorient and

intimidate wildebeests

could be contributing

to a troubling decline

in Mara River crossings.
TANZKAENNYIAA

Mara

TA N Z A N I A
Gibaso SERENGETI

Mara

NATIONAL PARK

Lake AREA P O P U L AT I O N G R OW T H
Victoria ENLARGED
Large families and good jobs led to a
MARA NAROK striking increase in the human popula-
MASAI MARA tion around the Masai Mara from 2009
to 2018. Pastoral groups that historically
NAT. RES. Nairobi moved with their livestock now are
permanent fixtures on land where
wildebeests once roamed freely.

SERENGETI TANKZEANNYIAA Population in park-adjacent regions
N.P. ARUSHA

SIMIYU

Population density TANZANIA 30.4% KENYA
Low High increase
(ARUSHA, MARA, SIMIYU) (NAROK COUNTY)
6.18 million
4.74 million (2018) 45.2% increase
(2009) 0.73
million 1.06 million

(2009) (2018)

Siongiroi Sigor Mulot The Mara River is a vital source of
N Kipkeigei freshwater for wildebeests in the
dry season. But it must first flow
yangoris Amala through agricultural fields, crowded
human settlements, and tourist
hot spots before reaching wildlife
protection zones in the south.

Ngorengore

ENONKISHU MARA Lemek Narok
OLCHORRO NORTH
Migrating wildebeests that try
OIROUA Ol Kinyie Hills to cross fences often get injured
oroi or die. Those trapped in pastures
KILORITI PLAIN can be difficult to remove. One
kin tagged animal was caught in a
LEMEK 330-acre pasture for four weeks
in October 2019.
Aitong
Ewaso Ngiro
MOTOROGI Single trapped
PARDAMAT wildebeest, 2019
K
EN YA

LOITA PLAINS

OLARE Olesere RESIDENT WILDEBEESTS Maji Moto
OROK
M A R A- L O I TA Land has increasingly moved into
Talek NABOISHO private hands and commercial
OL KINYEI farming. This keeps wildebeests
BUR from wet-season grazing lands on
OLARRO the Loita Plains and funnels them
NORTH into denser, more sedentary
clusters farther south.
RUNGAT PLAIN Talek Nkoilale
NASHULAI ISAATEN

Sekenani SIANA OLARRO LO
SOUTH IT
MASAI MARA A Narosura
NATIONAL Ol Doinyo Loise
H 132
2019
RESERVE Oloolaimutia S
L
SIANA L
I

OLDERKESI PLAINS TOURISM SURGE

Ol K In the past decade, the greater Seren-
Sand geti ecosystem has seen a dramatic
rise in tourism, especially in the Masai
Mara region. Foreign dollars sustain the
local economy, but garbage and human
waste, demand for freshwater, and jeep
tourism all stress the environment.

SOREN WALLJASPER AND TANZKAENNYIAA Total tourism facilities
MATTHEW W. CHWASTYK, NGM STAFF; in the greater Serengeti
ALEXANDER STEGMAIER
First facility installed
SOURCES: JARED STABACH AND LACEY HUGHEY, SMITHSONIAN 1970
CONSERVATION BIOLOGY INSTITUTE; JAKE WALL, MARA
ELEPHANT PROJECT; GRANT HOPCRAFT AND THOMAS MORRISON, 18
UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW; DANIEL SOPIA, MAASAI MARA WILDLIFE 2010
CONSERVANCIES ASSOCIATION; AARHUS UNIVERSITY

P H OTO ESSAY: T H E P EO P L E

GUARDIANS OF THE LAND

72

RICH TRADITIONS As a teen, Jeremiah to catch poachers who
AND CHALLENGES Cheruiyot Maritim target wildebeests and
killed animals to eat other animals migrat-
OVER RESOURCES and to sell as bush- ing through the area.
meat. Now a park Poachers set traps or
SHAPE DAILY LIFE. ranger, he patrols the sometimes drive ani-
Serengeti along the mals into gullies and
Kenya-Tanzania border kill them with spears.



In Kenya, the Mara
River weaves between
small ilchampai—farms
where crops are inter-
spersed with trees—
and industrial-scale
operations that use
center-pivot irrigation.
Together these forms
of agriculture consume
so much water that the
river has run extremely
low in recent years.

Maasai villagers tend
their animals in tradi-
tional bomas (this one
in Tanzania): home-
steads of dwellings
and corrals enclosed
with fencing made
from tangled, thorny
acacia branches to
keep livestock in and
predators out.



BOYS LEARN EARLY Melubo Olenauni sheep and goats, and
TO PROTECT THE HERD (at right) and his sons then later with cows.
return to their home When they become
AND LIVE IN HARMONY in Tanzania after bring- ilmurran, or warriors,
ing in the cows. Young they’re ready to be
WITH THE LAND. boys begin to learn responsible for the
shepherding with whole herd.

PHOTO ESSAY: THE PEOPLE PAGE

GUARDIANS OF THE LAND NO. 81



The pool table is a
social hub in Irkeepusi,
Tanzania, where men
who aren’t tending the
herd play for money
throughout the day.
Women work at home.
They milk cows, chop
and carry wood, and
haul water for cooking
and washing.



Naserian Dennis
Lukumai bathes three-
month-old Meng’oriki,
the youngest of her
four children, at home
in Tanzania. A fire
burns around the clock
in the communal area;
two other rooms shel-
ter young calves and
sheep that need spe-
cial attention. While
the 29-year-old takes
care of the household,
her husband, Dennis,
works as assistant
manager at the Lemala
Ngorongoro tented
safari camp.



Ol Doinyo Lengai,
Mountain of God in
the language of the
Maasai, is an active
volcano in Tanzania.
Considered the home
of Enkai, who signals
her wrath with erup-
tions and drought, it’s
a place of pilgrimage
for pastoralists, who go
to pray for rain, cattle,
and healthy children.

Yohana Medukenya
works at a hair salon
in Irkeepusi, taking
inspiration from a wall
of celebrity photo-
graphs. The 22-year-
old prefers styling hair
for men and women
at MGZ Quality Hair
Cuts to tending his five
cows. His family helps
out with the animals.



RIGHT PAGE

The Maasai in Orboma, NO. 90
Kenya, welcome tour-
ists who pay to visit
the village and learn
about traditions such
as the adumu, or jump-
ing dance, a rite of
passage for young
men. They compete to
see who can jump the
highest straight into
the air—and to win the
admiration of potential
brides. “It’s easy to be
cynical about tourism,”
photographer Charlie
Hamilton James says,
but he sees perfor-
mances like this as an
exchange of cultures.
Tourists get what
they’ve come to see,
and the Maasai get
money to support
their communities.

BELOW RIGHT

At the Koiyaki Guiding
School west of Nairobi,
students prepare for
a driving test. Several
dozen aspiring guides,
about half of them
on scholarships, take
a one-year course to
learn every aspect of
guiding a safari, from
driving to camp man-
agement to first aid.

MAKING A LEAP FROM VILLAGE LIFE
TO CAREERS IN TOURISM,
YOUNG MAASAI TRAIN FOR THE FUTURE
WHILE KEEPING TRADITIONAL WAYS.

PHOTO ESSAY: THE PEOPLE

GUARDIANS OF THE LAND





A wildlife team in saved. It’s illegal, but
Kenya’s Ol Kinyei some herders use pes-
Conservancy tends to ticides to kill animals
critically endangered that prey on livestock.
Rüppell’s and white- Other animals that eat
backed vultures that poisoned vultures, such
may have fed on a poi- as jackals, also may die
soned hyena. Two were in a toxic chain reaction.

RIGHT PAGE

Kenya’s Nyakweri NO. 94
Forest, at one time an
important birthing
area for elephants, was
formerly communal
land: 800 square miles
of indigenous wood-
land. But the forest has
been subdivided, and
Maasai have made it
their home—no longer
moving with their live-
stock as they once did,
but rather settling
down and sending
their children to
school. Forested land
is of little use to cattle
herders, so the Maasai
hire people from other
tribes to cut down
trees and burn wood
to clear grazing land
and produce charcoal.
In East Africa, 80
percent of the urban
population burns
charcoal as the primary
energy for cooking.

BELOW RIGHT

Francis Peenko (point-
ing at screen) and
other Mara Conser-
vancy rangers work
with Kenyan-born
Marc Goss from the
Mara Elephant Project
to steer a drone carry-
ing a thermal camera
to hunt for poachers.
Brian Heath (at far
right) is CEO of
the conservancy.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN PEOPLE NEED
MORE LAND, FUEL, AND FOOD?
FORESTS GET TURNED INTO CHARCOAL,
AND ANIMALS GET SNARED BY POACHERS.

PHOTO ESSAY: THE PEOPLE

GUARDIANS OF THE LAND



On his phone much
of every day, Leriro
Tung’ung’wa, chairman
of the Irkeepusi comm-
unity, manages issues
such as education,
health care, grazing
rights, and water
supply for more than
7,000 people on the
eastern edge of the
Ngorongoro Crater.