Selous Game Reserve, now named Nyerere National Park, is a truly wild area where you can walk, enjoy game drives and take river safaris.
With its rivers, plains and lakes, this immense sanctuary of 54,000 sq km is relatively undisturbed by human impact and provides a powerful sense of the scale of the African wilderness. Vast, remote and wild, this is a dramatic and exciting contrast to other parks in Tanzania in many ways.
As Africa’s largest protected wildlife reserve, Selous is larger than Switzerland, is 4 times the size of the Serengeti, covers 5% of Tanzania’s total land area and contains a third of the wildlife estate of Tanzania.
The Park has a wide variety of vegetation zones, ranging from forests and dense thickets to open wooded grasslands and riverine swamps. Groves of tall borassus and doum palms border the many small lakes and channels that flow from the confluence of the Rufiji and Great Ruaha Rivers. The Rufiji River is a striking feature of Selous: it is the largest water catchment locations in the region, and as such, is home to a plethora of varied water and bird life.
The Selous Game Reserve boasts one of the world’s largest populations of elephants but there are also wildebeests, giraffes, hartebeests, sable antelopes, greater kudus, elands, lions and leopards to be seen. More than 460 species of birds add to this sanctuary’s many attractions. Most interesting for true safari fanatics is the presence of the biggest population of wild dogs.
One of the other attractive aspects of the Selous is the variety of different ways in which you can go about your game-viewing. Game drives in open 4WD vehicles are the most traditional way to explore the reserve, and the chances of meeting any other vehicle is small. There is also the very different experience of approaching animals on foot, which is possible here. Walking safaris are an ideal way to enjoy more of the detail of the flora and the fauna. Finally, boat safaris, on small shallow draft boats, will enable yet another way to discover animals and landscapes. Though peaceful, there is always the very real excitement of coming close to huge hippos.
