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Write a User ReviewA Success Story for Rhino Conservation
The history of rhinos in Meru National Park is marked by both significant conservation successes and challenges. Initially, the park, established in 1966, was home to a healthy population of both black and white rhinos. However, by the late 1970s and 1980s, rampant poaching for rhino horns led to a dramatic decline in their numbers across Kenya, including in Meru. In response to the alarming decline, the Kenyan government established a dedicated rhino sanctuary within Meru National Park in the late 1980s.
“You can’t miss the rhinos”, said the game warden on our recent visit. He wasn’t wrong: we saw several every time we entered the sanctuary, and on our last drive we counted
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10 individuals. Due to the increasing rhino population, the sanctuary was expanded a few years ago from the initial 45km2 to about 80km2 and it now covers about 10% of the park. The fencing consists of close-together short stumps, so only the rhinos, with their little legs and round tummies, can’t pass. All other wildlife moves around the reserve and sanctuary freely. It’s a great success story in wildlife conservation and hopefully it will put Meru National Park a little bit more on the tourist map to help reduce the overcrowding in some of the more popular parks.
The Phoenix Park
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common and easily seen in Samburu and Buffalo Springs National Reserves. Meru is not a great reserve for large carnivores: lions are quite common but leopard, cheetah and spotted hyena sightings are rather unusual. Above all, Meru NP is most memorable for its wilderness atmosphere, which is enhanced by the limited tourist traffic – you can still go entire game drives here without seeing another vehicle.Where Elsa the Lion Roamed Free
If you’re longing for a Kenyan park which the crowds have yet to find, Meru is well worth considering. You have to work a little harder to see the animals here than in, say, Amboseli or on the open plains of the Masai Mara, but the feeling of discovery more than compensates. I really enjoy its mixture of grassland, marshland and wooded landscapes – it feels more like a southern African than an East African park.
Several watercourses cross the park, ensuring a good supply of vegetation all year round – enough to support a good population of elephants, along with buffalo, giraffes and zebras. I’ve spent some highly enjoyable hours birdwatching in Meru, too.
Kenya’s Forgotten Park
It’s certainly not because there are no animals. The manager of one of the park’s few lodges recalled to me how when he’d first arrived in Meru he was amazed by the variety of wildlife. It was true, he’d said, that animals aren’t to be found in the huge densities that they are in the Masai Mara, where he’d previously been based, but in just his first couple of hours in Meru he reckoned he’d seen more species than he would in a week or more in the Mara.
For a visitor there’s plenty of plains
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game, beautiful giraffes, a fair few elephants, and lions and leopards among many others. It’s also one of the best places to see rhinos. They live in an 83-square-kilometre ‘park within a park’ that has been fenced for their own protection. But maybe more than the wildlife it’s the sense of peace that so captivates. On my last three-day visit I didn’t see a single other safari jeep!This is also a very beautiful park and one with a real wilderness feel. One of my abiding memories of Meru is of sitting atop one of the kopjes (granite outcrops) with rock hyraxes playing just beyond my reach, the sun setting and a herd of several hundred buffalo marching across the plain below me.
To summarise, Meru is a park for people who want variety, a sense of wilderness and a total escape from other safari-goers.
Meru: Kenya’s Forgotten Park
The more I visit Meru, the more convinced I become that this is Kenya’s most underrated park. I’ve seen lions and rhinos, sometimes lots of them, every time I’ve visited, and leopard sightings are surprisingly common too. And, of course, buffalo, elephant and others are frequently seen, and the backdrop of northern mountains and palm-fringed pools is rather lovely. But it’s the sort of park where I keep having some really cool wildlife experiences – a python swimming in the river, a crossing of more than 20 reticulated giraffes just meters from the vehicle, a stand-off between lion and rhino. And the park is never crowded.
I also love a park with a story. It was here that George Adamson and his lioness Elsa (of the film ‘Born Free’ fame) roamed the plains and wrote their story.
Meru National Park: ‘Born Free’ Born Again
My three-day visit included good lion encounters – the population has been boosted by reintroductions – and evidence (tracks, kills and calls) of both leopard and cheetah. We also found several breeding herds of elephant, plus large buffalo herds and an impressive variety of antelope, including eland, Beisa oryx, Grant’s gazelle and the elusive lesser kudu. There are also hippos and crocodiles in the Tana River and a special fenced protection zone that is home to both species
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of rhino. A wealth of birds includes such riverine specials as African finfoot and, during my visit, huge numbers of wintering Afro-palearctic migrants – from wheatears and bee-eaters to Montagu’s harriers quartering the marshes. Activities here include night drives and bush walks, and with visitor numbers low you will seldom meet another vehicle.A Beautiful Off-the-Beaten-Track Wildlife Haven Without the Crowds
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River viewpoint and boardwalk, half-submerged hippos and crocs, reticulated giraffes loping down to drink, and kingfishers, rollers, bee-eaters and weavers flitting about. Meru has little accommodation, but the Kenya Wildlife Service cottages and campsites are good, and the spectacular 5-star Elewana Elsa’s Kopje on Mughwango Hill is the best place I’ve stayed in this region of northeast Kenya.Home of Elsa the ‘Born Free’ Lioness
There’s a real away-from-it-all frontier feel about Meru that sums up the magic of northern Kenya. Overlooked by the blue Nyambeni Hills, its grassy glades and thorny seas of combretum thickets convey an overwhelming sense of wildness seldom encountered elsewhere. Swamps and rivers lined with doum palms provide year-round water for the game, and red granite kopjes loom out of the bush, including Mughwango Hill, where George and Joy Adamson camped with Elsa, their famous ‘Born Free’ lioness. Today Elsa’s descendants still roam the park, and the hill itself is now the site of Elewana Elsa’s Kopje, one of my favourite Kenyan lodges, from which you can set out in search of Meru’s Big Five as well as species seen only in the north, including reticulated giraffe and Beisa oryx. Birding is good, too, especially along the banks of the Tana River and its tributary, the Rojewero, which are home to giant kingfisher and African finfoot.
Iconic Africa With a Few Surprises
There are other arid specialists to be found in Meru National Park too. Take the gerenuk, for instance, a weird-looking antelope that appears to have had its neck elongated on a rack, its head shrunk, and its ears stretched to an outlandish size.
You will see Beisa oryx with magnificent long horns, and you’ll also encounter reticulated giraffes with their pretty patterns and doleful eyes.
The usual suspects will be there in abundance too: large herds of buffalo. Lions, cheetahs, and leopards, as well as hippos, warthogs, elephants, and gazelles. You have a good chance of seeing them all, especially if you are doing a guided safari from one of the lodges in the park.