The Mara River Basin project

Figure 1 Map showing location of the Mara River Basin

The Mara River Basin is a transboundary river which lies along the Kenya–Tanzania border (Figure 1). The source of the river is in the Mau forests of Kenya and it flows across savanna grasslands and through wetlands to its mouth in Lake Victoria in Tanzania. The river runs through two National Parks — the Serengeti in Tanzania and the Masai Mara in Kenya, which support an important global ecosystem and

the highest number of grazing animals in the world. Each year more than a million wildebeest, half a million gazelle and 200,000 zebra migrate between the Serengeti and the Masai Mara in search of good grazing and water. The huge numbers of wild animals and the spectacle of the migration attract large numbers of visitors, making tourism essential to the local economy.