MANAGERS at the Serengeti National Park are introducing a number of new tourist products, adding to its legendary wildebeest migration.

Victor Ketansi, the park’s CEO, said at a recent briefing on park activity during the past four years, that sport fishing and boating tours can be added as the park boundaries were recently stretched to the shores of Lake Victoria.

Proximity to Africa’s largest inland water body is useful as Serengeti is experiencing a growing number of tourists, whom the management wishes to see coming back, thus the need to regularly introduce new products, he stated.

 “The park records a nine percent annual increase in visitors, an indication that these initiatives are paying dividends,” he asserted.

“What now remains is to increase the number of accommodation facilities and think of new products so that tourists return after their first or second experience in Serengeti,” he said.

Serengeti now joins Lake Victoria at Speke Bay, making it even more attractive, after removing a long narrow strip, three kilometers wide, earlier separating the water body from the park, he said, pointing out that the western corridor of the Serengeti features a mushy and wildlife rich precinct, between Mbalageti and Grumeti rivers.

The rivers drain into the Speke Bay area, creating a delta similar to Botswana’s Okavango but which was yet to be exposed to the many tourists visiting Serengeti.

Farmers and fishermen living in Tamau, Nyatwali, Kariakoo and Serengeti villages were compensated as the government allocated 45.9bn/-, paving the way for conservation designs.

Moving about 8,000 people out of the Speke game controlled area in Bunda District, Mara Region, uplifted the Serengeti ecosystem, now extending to include all the dry land between the lake shore and its current boundary.

The boundary flanks the highway north from Mwanza, crossing the Mbalageti River at its southern end and Grumeti some 12 kilometers north, officials explained.

Serengeti, up now measuring 14,763 square kilometers, now adds 54.67 square kilometers, while still retaining the third largest national park, after Nyerere and Ruaha.

Raymond Laizer, Natures Land Safaris and Rentals executive, wants the park management to improve roads in the park.

“Whenever it rains, most tracks are impassable, drivers have to keep to the main roads as the game drive routes get submerged,” he added.