Usangu Expedition Camp is a combination research, conservation, and adventure initiative located in the remote and seldom-explored Usangu Wetlands.

The Usangu Wetlands are a vital source of water and biodiversity in Ruaha National Park. The Usangu ecosystem only recently gained protection when it was incorporated into the national park in 2006. Guests at this remote camp will not see another vehicle during their stay, as there are currently no other camps in an area four times larger than Kenya's Masai Mara National Reserve.

Read more about the Usangu Wetlands below.

Usangu Expedition Camp, which opened 01 June 2022, has just four guest tents, each of which is constructed using minimal wooden supports and with walls consisting of shade cloth, offering 180-degree viewing from within.

Both of Usangu's game-drive vehicles are modified Land Rovers, that operate on ethanol sourced from molasses grown at a nearby plantation. The V8 engines can run on any combination of ethanol and petrol and are designed for passenger comfort and superb off-road capabilities.

Located adjacent to the small camp is the Douglas Bell Eco-Research Station, a collaborative and educational research facility that coordinates all conservation activities in Usangu. Guests to the camp will have the opportunity to learn about the research being conducted and engage with the researchers on a daily basis. Guest experiences will vary depending on which researchers are present. 

Safari activities at Usangu include game drives, walking safaris, canoeing, and boating. Uniquely, each guest is assigned a dedicated thermal monocular camera on arrival to the camp. Working with a researcher, each guest will place their camera trap in a location near the camp for the duration of their stay. On the last afternoon, the camera will be retrieved and the images viewed to see which animals have been recorded.

As part of their participation in research during their stay, each guest is encouraged to download and install the iNaturalist app onto their phone, where they can post their own image, as well as those from their camera trap. This app is free and its members are an online community of amateur and professional naturalists that share their sighting to a shared database to build a picture of an area's biodiversity.

For an additional donation, guests can also partake in a wildlife collaring expedition, which includes darting and placing a radio-telemetry tracking collar on a lion, elephant, wild dog, or one of a variety of antelope species being studied at the Research Station. Pre-booking a collaring activity is required.

The mission of Usangu Expedition Camp is to show proof that protecting these wetlands and surrounding floodplains provides current and long-term benefit to the surrounding communities, as well as the greater southeastern Tanzania region. By staying at the camp, guests are directly supporting the efforts to conserve and protect Usangu, as well as directly talking part in conservation and research activities themselves.

ABOUT RUAHA NATIONAL PARK

Ruaha National Park was originally declared in 1964 and has increased in size from that time, today covering 7 840 square miles (20 300 sq kms). The park is situated in Tanzania's Rift Valley and is the country's second-largest national park after Nyerere National Park (part of The Selous).

Ruaha National Park is the core area of a much larger protected area that includes three additional contiguous game reserves: Rungwa, Kizigo, and Muhesi. Ruaha is one of the least visited wildlife sanctuaries in Tanzania and visitors here will enjoy a true wilderness experience.

Ruaha's location is in the transitional zone between Eastern and Southern Africa, giving it a tremendous diversity of flora and fauna. Over 1 500 plant species and all the wildlife one can see in the Northern Tanzania parks are also present in Ruaha.

The park is named for the Great Ruaha River, which flows northeast through the national park, after which it bends southeast and enters Nyerere National Park, where it joins the Rufiji River, before flowing into the Indian Ocean. This river and a few of its tributaries are the only permanent sources of water in the park, which makes them the focal point for the best wildlife viewing in Ruaha.

The habitats in Ruaha are varied, with rocky outcrops and enormous granite boulders, steep gorges, sandy river banks with tall 'ilala' palm trees, and open savanna grasslands that are dotted with an abundance of baobab trees. There are also areas of Acacia and miombo woodland. The landscapes are similar to those found in some sections of Tarangire National Park to the north.

Visitors to Ruaha will see plenty of baobab trees, which are sometimes called 'the upside-down tree', which is a reference to their unique shape. The baobab (Adansonia digitata) is one of Africa's most iconic trees, with a lifespan that can exceed two thousand years. The baobab has a sullulent-like capacity to retain water and is deciduous, remaining leafless for about 8 months of the year.

Baobabs have adapted a high resistance to grass fires, which occur regularly in their savanna habitat. The tree produces large, white flowers that open for a single night beginning at sunset. During nighttime, they are pollinated hawk-moths, fruit bats, galagos (bush babies), and other insects. The dried fruits are relished by baboons, elephants, and other herbivores.

In terms of wildlife, Ruaha is home to large numbers of elephant, plus a number of lesser known antelopes, like sable, roan, and lesser kudu. The park also provides protection for large numbers of buffalo, as well as good numbers of zebra, eland, Grant's gazelle, impala, giraffe, defassa waterbuck, reedbuck, klipspringer, greater kudu, bushbuck, Liechtenstein's hartebeest, and Kirk's dik-dik. Ruaha is one of the few places where both lesser and greater kudu can be seen together.

The greater Ruaha region (including the surrounding game reserves and conservation areas) is home to roughly 10 percent of Africa's lion population, with some prides occasionally reaching twenty or more individuals. Besides lions, Ruaha's resident predators include healthy populations of leopard, cheetah, African wild dog, spotted hyena, black-backed jackal, and crocodile. Striped hyena are seen on occasion.

Due to the diversity of habitats occurring in Ruaha, the bird life is also diverse, with over 570 species recorded. As opposed to overall wildlife viewing, which is best during the dry season, birding is best during the rainy season, during which migratory species arrive from the north to breed.

The park has several good lodges and safari camps, many of them situated along the Great Ruaha River or one of its tributaries in the southeastern sector of the park. Game drives on tracks that follow the waterways provide excellent wildlife viewing. For the more intrepid, legendary bush walks with trained guides are on offer.

Ruaha makes an excellent destination in combination with Nyerere National Park (The Selous), which is located to the east. Ruaha can also be combined with any of the northern parks, including the Serengeti.

THE Usangu Wetlands

Located in the far southeast of Ruaha National Park, the Usangu Wetlands are a vast ecosystem covering roughly 2 300 square miles (6 000 sq kms) of true wilderness. The swamps and surrounding floodplains are vital to the survival of the Great Ruaha River system, the waterway that provides much of southeastern Tanzania's water and hydroelectric power all the way into the Selous-Nyerere reserves to the east.

The Ihefu Swamp is the permanently wet core portion of the Usangu Wetlands, while the surrounding area consists of grassy marshland and seasonal floodplains. During the long dry season (May thru October), only the Ihefu Swamp has water, but when the rains begin (typically sometime in November), the wetland expands to cover a vast area. Beyond the high-water mark of the seasonal floodplains is Miombo woodland. 

The wetlands and expansive floodplains are home to large numbers of wildlife, including Africa's largest herds of topi, which can sometimes be seen gathering in numbers over one-thousand animals.

Along with the topi are large herds of roan antelope, sable antelope, eland, and amazingly large numbers of ostrich, which are often seen in groups of over 100 birds. Predators include African wild dog, lion, cheetah, jackal, spotted hyena, leopard, and serval, all of which are found in Usangu in good numbers.

Usangu and it dynamic wetlands also provide habitat and breeding grounds for thousands of resident and migratory birds, as well as unknown numbers of amphibians and fishes.

The area surrounding the Usangu was unprotected until 2006, when the Usangu Game Reserve, which covers 1 600 square miles (4 148 sq kms), was incorporated into Ruaha National Park. Despite this new protected status, huge agriculture farms adjacent to the wetlands and outside of the national park continue to divert water and are threatening the entire Ruaha River system.

In 2019, Asilia Africa (the tourism company that owns and operates Usangu Expedition Camp, Jabali Ridge, and Kwihala Camp), in conjunction with Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute (TAWIRI) and Tanzania National Parks Authority (TANPA), set up a project in the wetlands to study the ecosystem and assess the potential of implementing tourism, developing a more robust water management plan with local government and business, and how to protect the wetlands.

The project also supports monitoring and collaring the rich biodiversity of wild animals that inhabits the wetlands and surrounding dry areas, as well as reducing poaching and human-wildlife conflict by engaging local communities and stakeholders.

A stay in Usangu contributes directly to the vitally important conservation efforts underway to ensure the protection of this region, its wildlife, and the crucial water source it provides.