The Ngorongoro Conservation Area is a protected wildlife area and a World Heritage Site located 180 km (110 mi) west of Arusha in the Crater Highlands area of Tanzania. The area is named after Ngorongoro Crater, the world’s largest inactive, intact and unfilled volcanic caldera within the area and is administered by the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority,
The Ngorongoro Conservation Area (809,440 ha) spans vast expanses of highland plains, savanna, savanna woodlands and forests, from the plains of the Serengeti National Park in the north-west, to the eastern arm of the Great Rift Valley.
The area was established in 1959 as a multiple land use area, with wildlife coexisting with semi-nomadic Maasai pastoralists practising traditional livestock grazing. It includes the spectacular Ngorongoro Crater, voted as one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World in Africa in 2013), and Olduvai Gorge, a steep-sided ravine (14km) in the Great Rift, considered to be the site of humanity.
The area has global importance for biodiversity and is host to the largest ungulate (large mammals with hooves) herds in the world. Approximately 25,000 mammals call the crater home including gnu (wildebeests), plains zebras, and Thomson and Grant gazelles. Predatory animals include lions (the crater is known to have one of the densest known lion populations), spotted hyenas, leopards, and cheetahs. The endangered black rhinoceros, and the hippopotamus can also be found there. Notable as well, is that more than 400 species of birds thrive in the area such as flamingos, superb starlings, and white pelicans, species of sunbirds. This game-rich region makes it a fantastic playground to witness Africa’s magnificent wildlife in their natural habitat.
Ngorongoro Conservation Area has been the subject of extensive archaeological research for over 80 years. It has been instrumental in yielding evidence of human evolution and human-environmental dynamics that collectively spans over four million years to the early modern era. This evidence includes: fossilized footprints, at Laetoli, that are associated with the development of human bipedalism; a sequence of diverse evolving hominin species, within Olduvai Gorge, which range from Australopiths, such as Zinjanthropus boisei, to the Homo lineage that includes Homo habilis, Homo erectus and Homo sapiens; an early form of Homo sapiens at Lake Ndutu; and in the Ngorongoro Crater, remains that document the development of stone technology and the transition to the use of iron. The overall landscape of the area has the potential to reveal much more evidence concerning the rise of anatomically modern humans, modern behavior, and human ecology.