A Maasai cowbell caldera draws three-quarters of a million visitors
Ngorongoro Conservation Area, a UNESCO World Heritage site in Tanzania’s Crater Highlands 180 kilometres west of Arusha, is named for a volcanic caldera whose Maasai name imitates a cowbell—ngoro ngoro. In 2023 some 752,232 tourists came, making it one of Tanzania’s top draws.
The centrepiece is the largest inactive, intact and unflooded caldera anywhere: a bowl 610 metres deep whose floor spreads over 260 square kilometres at 1,800 metres above sea level. It formed two to three million years ago when a volcano, estimated at 4,500 to 5,800 metres tall, blew out and collapsed. The Munge Stream from Olmoti Crater feeds a seasonal salt lake the Maasai call Makat, while the Ngoitokitok Spring waters a swamp where hippos and elephants gather. Nearby Ol Doinyo Lengai, 'Mountain of God', is still active and erupted in 2007 and 2008.
About 25,000 large animals live on the crater floor, including an estimated 7,000 wildebeest and 4,000 zebras in 1994. Giraffes, impala and crocodiles are absent. Black rhinos fell from about 108 in the mid-1960s to only 13 in 1993; protection by conservation groups rebuilt the herd to 55 by 2018. Spotted hyenas here have been under continuous study since 1996.
Olduvai Gorge, a 50-kilometre ravine in the rain shadow of the highlands, is named for the Maasai word for wild sisal. Mary and Louis Leakey began digging there in the 1950s, and its layers yielded early members of our genus, Homo habilis, along with Paranthropus boisei. Iraqw herders arrived about 2,000 years ago and Datooga around 1700, before Maasai drove both out in the 1800s. Oscar Baumann became the first known European visitor in 1892, and two German brothers farmed the crater until 1914, trying to push its wildebeest out.
A 1959 ordinance separated the area from Serengeti National Park to secure Maasai land rights, and UNESCO listed it in 1979, adding cultural status for Olduvai in 2010. Grazing cattle in the crater was banned from 2015, and since 2021 the government has pursued moving Maasai residents to Msomera, 600 kilometres away, a programme Human Rights Watch says has been coercive.
Source: Ngorongoro Conservation Area
