Mkomazi National Park
Dry-country species, black rhino and wild dog, under Kilimanjaro.
Overview
Mkomazi runs along the Kenyan border in north-east Tanzania and shares its ecosystem with Tsavo West on the other side of the line, which is why its animals are the ones you see in Kenya’s dry north rather than on the Serengeti plains: gerenuk standing on their hind legs to feed, fringe-eared oryx, lesser kudu, eland and Grant’s gazelle, across nyika thornbush with the Pare and Usambara mountains on one side and Kilimanjaro sometimes visible on the other. It was a game reserve for most of its life and became a national park in 2008. Two reintroduction programmes define it. Black rhino have been bred here in a fenced sanctuary since the 1990s, and a tourist sanctuary at Mbula opened to visitors in 2021 — one of the few places in Tanzania where seeing a rhino is close to reliable. African wild dog have been released into the open park since 1999; they range enormously and sightings are rare.