Selous Game Reserve
Selous Game Reserve covers over 50,000 square kilometers, it is the largest game reserve in Africa, There are over 51,200 elephant, 109,000 buffalo and big herds of other large and small animals found in Africa, most importantly, some wild dog the Selous is another park with all this hyperbole which is desperately unsold. Selous is one of those places that calls you back, one of Africa's great parks for sure we also think is one of the most subtle.
Selous Game
Reserve is the place where people enjoy dosing off to the sound
of a fish eagle as much as they do chasing around the bush in
search of big game, the winding Rufiji River, sunset over the
Beho Beho mountains is what makes Selous a special place,
especially when you compare it with the typical race around the
Northern Parks of Tanzania.
Unlike most of the other major safari parks of Tanzania, Selous
is at low altitude. Being near to the coast, this means that the
climate of the area is similar to that prevailing in coastal
circuit, which is to say that it is a typical tropical climate,
hot and humid all year round. In Selous there are over 789,000
major mammals, 40% of the total in Tanzania and perhaps 9% of
the total world Elephant population.
Most of these elephant spend their time in the inaccessible
swamps which occupy the majority of the park, but there are
usually plenty in the game-viewing areas to the North as well as
2500 - 3500 lion, there are also wildcat, servalcat, caracal and
leopard, there are also so many giraffe in some areas,
additionally the rivers play host to large populations of hippo
and crocodile, as well as an elusive population of dugong down
in the Rufiji delta
Selous Game Reserve was first set aside as a wildlife reserve as
early as 1905, the park takes its name from renowned hunter and
soldier Frederick Courtney Selous. In 1982 the Selous Game
Reserve was designated a World Heritage Site. One of the most
attractive aspects of the Selous is the incredible diversity of
the environments within its ecosystem, miombo woodland
(deciduous hardwoodland), open grassland, rocky acacia clad
hills, palm woodland, seasonally flooded sand rivers and swamps,
lakes and riverine forest. The miombo woodland, second in
biodiversity only to the rainforest, contains a plethora of
wonderful hardwood tree families such as brachystegia,
julbernadia, isoberlina, pterocarpus (bloodwood), dalbergia (blackwood),
combretum (leadwood) in fact most of the 2,149 species of trees
and plants that are found in the reserve.
It is at its absolute best in the 'green season' (December to
June); all the trees have new leaves and flowers; all the
grasses and shrubs are luscious and in bloom, and consequently
almost every flower, animal and bird that it is possible to see
in the Selous is there in abundance as such the reserve is
ecologically one of the most important habitats in Africa,