Africa’s Largest Protected Area

The Wilderness That Defies Comprehension

There are numbers that the human mind accepts intellectually but cannot quite contain emotionally — numbers so large that they transcend ordinary comprehension and enter the territory of the genuinely abstract. The Selous Game Reserve — officially renamed the Nyerere National Park in 2019 in honour of Tanzania’s founding president Julius Nyerere — is one of those numbers made physical: a protected wilderness area of approximately 54,600 square kilometres that is larger than Switzerland, larger than Denmark, larger than Costa Rica, and more than twice the size of the Serengeti National Park. It is the largest game reserve in Africa and one of the largest protected ecosystems on earth, and its sheer scale gives every experience within its borders a quality of vastness, of limitlessness, and of genuine frontier wilderness that no other destination in Tanzania can match.

The Selous was established as a game reserve in 1922 and designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982, recognitions that reflect the extraordinary ecological significance of an ecosystem that supports one of the largest concentrations of wildlife in Africa within a landscape of such minimal human disturbance that vast sections of it are visited by fewer than a handful of people in any given year. The northern section of the reserve — the photographic zone where tourist camps are located and vehicle-based safaris operate — covers approximately 5% of the total reserve area, leaving the remaining 95% as a managed wildlife area of extraordinary pristine character accessible only to specialist walking and fly-camping expeditions.

The Rufiji River: The Soul of the Selous

The Rufiji River — Tanzania’s largest river, draining approximately 20% of the country’s total land area — flows through the heart of the Selous in a complex, braided system of channels, ox-bow lakes, seasonal floodplains, and permanent water bodies that creates one of the most diverse and most productive aquatic ecosystems in East Africa. The Rufiji is the defining feature of the Selous safari experience, providing a dimension of wildlife viewing that no other Tanzania destination can offer — the boat safari.

Drifting along the Rufiji River in a small, open boat at dawn, with the extraordinary bird life of the river banks waking to the day around you, the hippos retreating from their nocturnal grazing back into the safety of the water, the crocodiles beginning their morning basking on the sandbanks, and the elephants arriving at the water’s edge for their morning drink — this is a safari experience of such extraordinary intimacy, such complete sensory immersion, and such profound, peaceful beauty that it occupies a place entirely its own in the landscape of Tanzania wildlife experiences. The silence of the river in the early morning, broken only by bird calls, the splash of a hippo, and the soft, rhythmic dip of the paddle, creates a quality of present-moment awareness and sensory openness that the noise and motion of a vehicle-based game drive cannot replicate, and that many visitors to the Selous describe as the most meditative and most genuinely restorative experience of their entire safari.

Wildlife of the Selous: Africa’s Most Diverse Ecosystem

The Selous Game Reserve supports one of the most diverse and most abundant assemblages of wildlife in Africa, with population estimates that reflect the extraordinary productivity and the enormous scale of the ecosystem. The reserve holds approximately 120,000 buffalo — one of the largest buffalo populations remaining in Africa — as well as significant populations of elephants, lions, leopards, wild dogs, hippos, crocodiles, giraffes, zebras, wildebeest, and an extraordinary diversity of antelope species. The African wild dog is particularly well represented in the Selous, with the reserve supporting one of the largest and most stable wild dog populations anywhere on earth — a fact that makes it one of the most consistently reliable locations in Tanzania for observing this extraordinary, charismatic, and deeply endangered predator.

The lion population of the Selous is one of the largest in Africa, with an estimated 4,000 individuals distributed across the reserve’s enormous territory in prides of varying size and character. Lion sightings in the photographic zone of the northern Selous are remarkably consistent, and the combination of open floodplain habitat near the river and dense woodland in the interior creates the variety of environments that lions exploit at different times of day and in different seasons, making game drives in the Selous consistently productive and consistently surprising in the variety and the quality of what they produce.

Walking Safaris in the Selous

The Selous Game Reserve is one of the great walking safari destinations in Tanzania and Africa, its combination of varied terrain, extraordinary wildlife, and genuine remoteness creating the perfect conditions for the most intimate and most adventurous form of safari experience available. Walking safaris in the Selous operate from several of the reserve’s finest camps and are led by some of Tanzania’s most experienced and most highly qualified professional walking guides — individuals whose knowledge of the bush, whose understanding of wildlife behaviour, and whose ability to read the landscape and anticipate animal movement is the product of years of dedicated, practical experience in one of Africa’s most demanding and most rewarding wilderness environments.

When to Visit the Selous

The dry season from June through October is the finest time to visit the Selous, with the wildlife concentrations around the Rufiji River and its associated water bodies reaching their peak as the surrounding landscape dries and the water’s draw becomes irresistible. The green season transforms the Selous with extraordinary lushness and brings exceptional bird life and baby animals, and the boat safari experience is enhanced during the rains by higher water levels that provide access to areas of the river system that the dry season’s lower water makes inaccessible.

The Selous as an Essential African Experience

The Selous Game Reserve is, in the most fundamental sense, what the word wilderness actually means — a place so large, so wild, so minimally impacted by human presence, and so abundantly, extravagantly alive that spending time within it produces a quality of perspective and of wonder that reshapes the visitor’s understanding of the natural world and of their own place within it. It is Tanzania’s most undervisited major destination and its most genuinely extraordinary secret, and discovering it is one of the finest things a Tanzania safari traveller can do.