The Ngoron­goro Con­ser­va­tion Area spans vast expans­es of high­land plains, savan­na, savan­na wood­lands and forests. Estab­lished in 1959 as a mul­ti­ple land use area, with wildlife coex­ist­ing with semi-nomadic Maa­sai pas­toral­ists prac­tic­ing tra­di­tion­al live­stock graz­ing, it includes the spec­tac­u­lar Ngoron­goro Crater, the world‘s largest caldera. The prop­er­ty has glob­al impor­tance for bio­di­ver­si­ty con­ser­va­tion due to the pres­ence of glob­al­ly threat­ened species, the den­si­ty of wildlife inhab­it­ing the area, and the annu­al migra­tion of wilde­beest, zebra, gazelles and oth­er ani­mals into the north­ern plains. Exten­sive archae­o­log­i­cal research has also yield­ed a long sequence of evi­dence of human evo­lu­tion and human-envi­ron­­ment dynam­ics, includ­ing ear­ly hominid foot­prints dat­ing back 3.6 mil­lion years.