Mikumi National Park is a wonderful protected area of outstanding natural beauty and high biodiversity. The Park supports a wide range of large mammals, including elephants, lions, giraffe, zebra and buffalo, and offers unique conservation, education and research opportunities. Mikumi is also an excellent retreat for birding enthusiasts with confirmed sightings of nearly 400 different species. It occupies an area of 3,230sqkms and is the 4th largest national park in Tanzania. It is probably the most accessible of all the national parks in the country with only a 4 hour drive from Dar es Salaam.
Bordering onto the Selous game reserve on the south and Udzungwa national park in the west, Mikumi plays in important central role in the southern safari circuit. In fact Mikumi is more or less an extension to the vast Selous game reserve and offers similar wildlife, vegetation and other sightseeing opportunities.
The center piece of Mikumi is the convergence of animals at the extensive floodplains of the Mkata River. These floodplains consist of open grassland interspersed with patches of acacia woodland, the closest thing on the southern circuit to the Serengeti. Mikumi boasts an impressive 200km of drivable tracks, though most become impassable during the rains. The main wildlife viewing area is the hot, low-lying Mkata floodplain, in the centre of the park north of the highway, which offers more or less guaranteed sightings of elephant, buffalo, herds of eland and a host of other plains game, including zebra, wildebeest, impala, warthog, waterbuck, reedbuck, greater kudu, sable and giraffe. Amongst the predators there is a good chance of spotting lion (sometimes in the branches of a tree) but leopard (also in trees) are more elusive as are the rare and endangered African hunting dog. The floodplain's northern section consists of low ridges of relatively impervious "hardpan" soil separated by narrower depressions of easily waterlogged black cotton soil (mbuga), which turn to swamp during the rains. In the dry season when the swamps recede, hippo and waterbirds congregate around permanent waterholes. The southern part of the floodplain, which includes Kikoboga, is drier and has some slow-flowing streams. The swamp edges are characterized by baobabs and rows of borassus palms, known in the local tribal language as mikumi, hence the park's name. Borassus palms grow up to 20m high and are easily distinguished from the often crooked Hyphaene palms by the strangely graceful swellings halfway up their trunks.
Mikumi also supports an abundant birdlife population. More than 400 species have been recorded at the park, including bateleur eagle, black-bellied bustard, lilac-breasted roller, ground hornbill, yellow-throated longclaw, long-tailed fiscal, fish eagle, white-faced duck and African spoonbill.
