Ngorongoro Conservation Area

About Ngorongoro Conservation Area

The Ngorongoro Conservation Area is one of Africa’s most extraordinary and complex protected landscapes, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the continent’s most biodiverse regions, covering approximately 8,292 square kilometres of the eastern Rift Valley in northern Tanzania encompassing volcanic highlands, open plains, ancient gorges, crater lakes and some of the world’s most significant paleoanthropological sites. Unlike a national park, the NCA operates as a multiple land-use area where wildlife conservation coexists alongside the traditional pastoral lifestyle of the Maasai people who are the only community permitted to live and graze their livestock within its boundaries making it a globally celebrated model of human and wildlife coexistence. The NCA contains within its boundaries an extraordinary collection of distinct sub-destinations including the Ngorongoro Crater, the Ndutu short-grass plains, the Empakai and Olmoti volcanic craters, the Olduvai Gorge paleoanthropological site, the Shifting Sands phenomenon, Lake Ndutu and Lake Masek, the Gol Mountains, the Salei Plains, the Empaakai highlands and the active volcano Ol Doinyo Lengai on its northern boundary each offering a completely different landscape, ecological experience and cultural layer within one contiguous protected area that together represent one of the most layered and rewarding destinations in all of Africa.