Adventurous Wildebeest River Crossing Draws Crowds To East Africa

About 100,000 wildebeests on Friday gathered alongside the Mara River at the Maasai Mara National Reserve in East Kenya, preparing for their adventurous annual crossing where they will face attacks from crocodiles and hippos.              

 

Millions of wildebeests will cross this river accompanied by thousands of zebras and Thomson gazelles. 

 

Their sheer population size is good news for all the predators in the Mara River.              

 

Greedy crocodiles have been expecting their annual feast for long, while bad-tempered hippos are ready to give these herbivores a lesson once they enter the territory.              

 

A rare picture in which wildebeests and giraffes match side by side makes the event even more miraculous.              

 

[Xing Ba, Volunteer and Environmentalist]: 

"I have different feelings every time I come here. But a common one is that the scene is overwhelming. I can feel the continuous circle of life on the Earth, and I also feel keenly the need to protect this one of the last pure lands on this planet.”

 

Known as one of the seven new wonders, the wildebeest migration is a spectacle that attracts numerous tourists from around the world every July, when the herbivores cross from the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania to Kenya's Maasai Mara National Reserve.              

 

The wild animals stay in the Mara for three months before moving back to the Serengeti and repeating the whole journey the next year.