Ngorongoro

Declared in 1959 when the old Serengeti National Park was divided, Ngorongoro represents an unusual model of protected-area management: unlike a conventional national park, it allows wildlife to live alongside the traditional herding of the Maasai, who were moved out of the Serengeti precisely so that this multiple use could be preserved here. Its crater, formed 2-3 million years ago when a volcano larger than Kilimanjaro collapsed in on itself, is the largest intact, unflooded volcanic caldera in the world, its walls rising as much as 600 metres and acting as a natural barrier that keeps much of its wildlife — including one of the greatest concentrations of predators in Africa — all but confined within the crater year-round. It is also celebrated for the nearby palaeoanthropological site of Olduvai Gorge, where Louis and Mary Leakey unearthed in the 1950s and 1960s some of the oldest human fossils ever found.