The animals’ stampede through the Mara river is one of nature’s most spectacular events. But now the watercourse is drying up, a sign of the damage being done to Africa’s fragile eco-system Wildebeest and zebra mass to cross the Mara river on their annual migration. This year the river has run dry for the first time. REUTERS

By Daniel Howden The scale of it is hard to comprehend. Even standing on the dented roof of an old jeep in the Serengeti and seeing hoofed animals stretching out to the horizon in all directions only affords you a glimpse of it. The great wildebeest migration is underway and more than a million of them, together with hundreds of thousands of zebras, are heading north from the endless plains of Tanzania’s Serengeti region into the pastures of the Masai Mara in Kenya, seeking water and grass. The quintessential image of the migration is the crossing of the Mara river: the surprising vulnerability of the wildebeest horde as they scramble down one bank and up the other, their fierce horns and grey-bearded heads turning nervously in search of predators. It’s a spectacle routinely referred to as the seventh wonder of the world and one that draws tens of thousands of top-dollar tourists to both banks of the Mara every year. But this year there is something missing – the water. “This is the first year we’ve ever seen the river this low,” says Will Deed, who works with the Mara Conservancy, a not-for-profit group which manages one third of this huge reserve. “In parts there’s just small channel, one or one-and-a-half feet deep.” In the same stretches of the river last year the water was as deep as five feet and “the wildebeest and zebra were up to their chests or necks, or even swimming,” he adds. “Normally it’s an incredible ordeal for the wildebeest, with crocodiles waiting for them in the river.” At this point of the animals’ migration north – which begins in earnest in early August – the ordeal has been reduced to a short hop and the grateful wildebeest can move on to the rich, green grazing of the reserve itself. “What we are seeing is not necessarily the end of the migration but it is the end of the spectacle of the crossing,” says Mr Deed. The drying-up of the river, which should be at its highest point at the end East Africa’s long rainy season, is one of a series of ominous signs that conservationists believe could add up to an ecological disaster. …

The wildebeest river is running dry