Lake Manyara

Lake Manyara National Park was established in 1960 in northern Tanzania, in the Arusha region, and protects some 330 km², a substantial part of which is the surface of the lake itself.

The park occupies a narrow strip between the lake and the western escarpment of the Rift Valley, which rises hundreds of metres immediately behind. That arrangement concentrates a notable succession of environments in a small space: groundwater forest fed by the water welling up at the foot of the escarpment, wooded acacia savannah, floodplain grassland and the alkaline lake, shallow and of highly variable extent with the season.

The lake supports large concentrations of lesser and greater flamingo, alongside pelicans and waterbirds in their thousands. The land fauna includes a dense elephant population, buffalo, giraffe, hippopotamus and olive baboons in very large troops. Manyara is famous above all for its tree-climbing lions, which rest in the branches of the acacias, a behaviour uncommon in the species and regularly seen here. The area forms part of the Lake Manyara Biosphere Reserve, recognised by UNESCO in 1981.