US TV crew sees all except ‘white buffalo’ at Ngorongoro

MARC NKWAME in Arusha

THE television crew from American Broadcasting Company (ABC) that has been filming and airing live footages from Ngorongoro Crater to the US may have captured almost all types of wildlife found in the caldera, except one strange species – the white buffalo.

Last Tuesday’s historical live airing from Arusha to New York City, according to Ms Farhoun Sanoon of ABC News, was watched by nearly 60 million people worldwide, including the six million in NYC who viewed directly through ABC News’ ‘Good Morning America’ programme last Wednesday.

More than 50 million others across the United States through affiliate television stations and tens of thousands others viewed the programme through online channels.

Viewers had a field day, seeing such breathtaking sceneries as the astounding large caldera, its big five residents (lion, elephant, buffalo, leopard and rhino), part of the wildebeest migration, Crater Lake species like hippos and reptiles as well as a variety of birds.

The TV crew also took time to film a traditional Maasai wedding for maximum effect and impact. But Ngorongoro has one strange animal, which was recently discovered on the crater rim, a buffalo spotting milk-white fur, the first ever to be seen in the country.

Apparently, the strange animal somehow eluded camera lenses as well as eyeballs of the American TV crew and their global viewers. When asked about the elusive white buffalo, the Conservator of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority (NCAA), Dr Freddy Manongi, said indeed it was a strange thing to have a white buffalo, but described it to be the result of mutation of genes.

The possibility of having a new breed of white ‘mbogo’ in the area was, therefore, minimal. “It is actually a weakness, not something that we will be promoting in a hurry, though indeed it may attract a different kind of visitors in future once the news about this strange buffalo start circulating,” he pointed out.

Already the Ngorongoro Conservation receives more than 600,000 tourists in a year. While the Ngorongoro Conservation Area is also home to abundant large giraffes, those who watched the live crater coverage may not have seen the tall, proud mammals because these hardly ever venture into the caldera, where the TV crew was concentrating but stay high above the rim.