Mkomazi National Park

Mkomazi National Park is located in northeastern Tanzania on the Kenyan border, in Kilimanjaro Region and Tanga Region. It was established as a game reserve in 1951 and upgraded to a national park in 2006.

The park covers over 3,234 kilometer   and is dominated by Acacia–Commiphora vegetation; it is contiguous with Kenya’s Tsavo West National Park. The area commonly called ‘Mkomazi’ is actually the union of two previous game reserves, the Umba Game Reserve in the east and the Mkomazi Game Reserve in the west in government documents they are sometimes called the Mkomazi-Umba Game Reserves. Of the two, Mkomazi is larger, and has more diversity of relief and habitat, and a longer shared border with Tsavo West National Park. In the rest of this entry, ‘Mkomazi’ will refer to both the Mkomazi and Umba reserves together.

This park is also one of the best places to see large herds of oryx and gerenuks roaming freely in the open bush land. Other small and large mammals that call Mkomazi their home include lions, leopards, cheetahs, hyenas, jackals, elephants, buffaloes, hartebeests, giraffes and warthogs.

A healthy population of 450 bird species is also found in the park and several species can be seen during a game drive. The most commonly seen species include go away birds, ostriches, long crested eagles, hoopoes and bustards. Around the Umba River, sightings of kingfishes, flamingos, cormorants, plovers, ducks and crocodiles basking on the banks are common.

Mkomazi is a refuge for the endangered black rhino and wild dog. Two conservation projects are booking promising results: the Mkomazi Rhino Sanctuary that resulted in successful breeding and the Wild Dog Capture and Translocation Programme that successfully released a few dozen dogs into the wild in the last decade.