Tarangire Archive
On Safari: Tarangire at its Best
Posted by jimheck in Big Game, OnSafari, Tarangire, Wildlife Management on April 5, 2013
Tarangire proved as exciting as I expected, and we dodged the heavy rain, and as a result we achieved the optimum experience of the year for this wilderness. You can go on safari virtually at any time of the year to East Africa and with good planning have the most memorable trip of your life. [...]
On Safari: Tarangire Cats
Four lion brothers together for life is not unheard of, but quite unusual and we watched them in Tarangire today after they had mastered a huge kill. The childrens books’ rendition of lion or the incomplete TV documentaries make people believe that every lion belongs to a pride headed by a grand master who only [...]
On Safari : Still Too Many Ele
Posted by jimheck in OnSafari, Tarangire, Wildlife Management on March 7, 2013
Tarangire National Park is the perfect place to demonstrate there are too many elephants in the wild right now, and it didn’t fail to confirm the theory this time! We had exceptional game viewing based from a new, luxury lodge called ChemChem. Our day and a half of game viewing in Tarangire probably encountered 500 [...]
To Poach Is/Or To Cull
Posted by jimheck in Big Game, Tarangire, Wildlife Management on October 29, 2012
Is the extraordinary almost unbelievable reproductive rate of elephants in Tarangire National Park driving poaching? Elephant researcher Charles Foley, whose principal research camp is located inside Tarangire National Park, reported this year that elephants that principally use Tarangire as their habitat are reproducing at a 7% rate. For a large mammal that is nearly inconceivable. [...]
Dave’s Winning Video
Posted by jimheck in Big Game, Ngorongoro Crater, Tarangire on December 8, 2009
I am sent hundreds of hours of video and thousands of photos every year, and I love watching them all. But this takes the prize! The prize winner is by one of the nicest guys I’ve ever guided on safari, Cleveland veterinarian, Dave Koncal. He is not a photographer or cinematographer by trade, but he [...]
Tarangire Zebra?!
Our experience in Tarangire with elephants was nothing short of fantastic. But Tarangire is morphing: there’s much more, now, than just ele. Our two days with the Cleveland Zoo safari in Tarangire probably encountered as many as 800 elephants. On our second day alone we counted upwards of 500, and it was extremely exciting. Ele [...]
Wild Intervention
Posted by jimheck in Tarangire, Wildlife Management on September 5, 2009
The Cleveland Zoo supports an important elephant researcher in Tarangire, Charles Foley, and we visited him in his camp in Tarangire. Foley is an independent researcher who has worked in Tarangire for 16 years. He is among a handful of north-of-southern-Africa researchers with an impressive knowledge of how elephants effect and interact with their ecosystem. [...]
Fabulous Tarangire
Posted by jimheck in Big Game, Tarangire, Wildlife Management on July 4, 2009
While much of the rest of East Africa is suffering in the midst of a serious drought, Tarangire though dry is still fabulous. We entered the national park in the late afternoon at the northern gate, and we’d traveled hardly three minutes before we encountered the Watermelon Club. The watermelon club is composed of 20 [...]
Bingo at Tarangire
Yes, it’s dry, and that’s when Tarangire really performs. And boy, how it did on this safari! We flew into the Kuro airstrip after several event less flights from Samburu, arriving in mid-afternoon with my Tanzanian crew waiting patiently. When we were flying in, I noticed a huge number of elephant at the Silale swamp, [...]
Tarangire Elephants
Tarangire’s elephant game viewing is excellent year-round. It simply can no longer be considered a seasonal destination. It was drier than when I visited the park only 12 days ago. Then there were many pools of standing water and a lush green veneer covered everything. For our visit this time it was still green, but [...]
Yr-Round Tarangire
Don’t consider Tarangire only a seasonal park any longer. For several years, now, I’ve been writing how wonderful Tarangire National Park is at any time of the year. So many guide books claim otherwise. They’re wrong. Until the early 1980s, Tarangire was a hunting preserve. The 2200 sq. miles is the best elephant habitat in [...]