The Great Migration
It is amazing place with beautiful landscape, wildebeests, elephants, leopards……

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Anchor:
If you look at the lines of wildebeests. You'll see out of here, they really… we can learn something from them, they really do form lines. Sometimes 3 miles long as they get ready to migrate. The wildebeests might be an animal you haven't heard of before, but they are central to the great migration.

Voiceover:
On the east African plains you'll find it all, the king, the majestic elephants, the towering giraffes, every creature, great and small, doing its part in this kingdom. You can't help but notice the wildebeests, lots and lots of wildebeests. Our guide Gerald Selempo tells us the locals have a nickname for them.

Gerald Selempo:(Abercrombie & Kent tour guide)
"They call them the crowns, because they look like they were made up of the leftovers of all the other animals. They have a head of a buffalo, legs of an antelope and a tail of a horse and they just don't look very balanced."

Voiceover:
But the wildebeests do bring balance to this fragile ecosystem, made up of the Serengeti and the Masai Mara. They are the heart and soul of the great migration, the key to survival on these vast plains.

Prof. Karim Hirji:(Former director of Serengeti Wildlife Research Centre)
"Everything survives within that migration, they are the predators sawn the vegetation."

Voiceover:
The journey is quite literally the circle of life. It happens a year round, a 700 mile trek finally tuned to the region's rainy seasons. The herds follow the rain.

Gerald Selempo:
"It's mostly for food and water, where they can get as much water and as much grass as possible. "

Voiceover:
It's not always easy-going with the circle of life comes the promise of death. Lions, cheetahs and leopards look forward to the herds' arrival, wildebeests are easy prey for a big cat. And once they're done, the vultures move in to clear away the leftovers. And sometimes the migrating beasts seal their own fate. Watch this group of wildebeests going the right way--South, only to be distracted when they sense rain to the North. The result: it can be crossing a river filled with unfriendly crocodiles. It happens over and over again.

Gerald Selempo:
"They'll crisscross this river several times, sometimes 10, 20 times, depending on which way they want to go."

Anchor:
"But the miracle of this great migration: mysteriously they always find their way. No one knows how long the animals have been migrating, but one change in the environment here can trigger enormous consequence. In the early 1900s, the disease called Rinderpest swept through Africa severely reducing the herds from 2 million to just a few hundred thousand. Then in the 1990s, a devastating drought decimated the populations even further. "

Prof. Karim Hirji:
"If the climate changes drastically, then this whole equilibrium is going to be thrown out of face."

Voiceover:
The wildebeest population is stable again, now more than a million strong. In late winter early spring, the herds move to their version of a maternity ward. The new trend reaches South Serengeti; it's the only place on the migration raw where wildebeests can successfully have babies. And do they! Three hundred thousand cubs born in just 3 weeks. Those new babies join their parents, the zebras and other migratory animals, making the turn North and following the rains again,a never ending circle reminding us of the wonder of life.

Anchor:
And along the way, they pass through a lot of neighborhoods of animals but also of humans. We mentioned earlier the men who wear red. They're the Masai people. And they live in this region here, they're cattle herders and their villages interestingly are circular, there are circles and they keep the cattle in the middle of the village at night so that the predators won't be able to get at the cattle and that is how they survive.

(Transcribed by flyideal)

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