Safari Map

🌍 Your Gateway to the World’s Wild Places

Close your eyes and imagine standing at the edge of the Serengeti at dawn, the air thick with the smell of dry grass and distant rain. A cheetah pauses on a termite mound, scanning the horizon with amber eyes that have evolved over millions of years for precisely this moment. Somewhere behind you, a lion exhales. The world’s great wildernesses are not just places on a map — they are living, breathing organisms, each one home to creatures that have shaped our planet’s story long before humans arrived to witness it.

This safari map is your passport to those places. From the sun-scorched savannas of East Africa to the cloud-shrouded rainforests of Borneo, from the frozen silence of Antarctica to the riotous abundance of the Amazon, we invite you on a journey across every major wildlife region on Earth. Each stop on this map carries its own heartbeat — its own suite of iconic animals, its own seasonal rhythms, its own urgent conservation story. Read slowly. These places deserve your full attention.

“In every walk with nature, one receives far more than he seeks.” — John Muir

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According to the World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet Report 2024, monitored wildlife populations have declined by an average of 73% since 1970. That number should stop you cold. It means that in a single human lifetime, three-quarters of the planet’s wild animals have disappeared. But it also means that one-quarter remain — and the places on this map are where they live, where they fight for survival, and where you can go to witness something irreplaceable before it is gone.

🦁 African Savanna — The Serengeti and Masai Mara

No region on Earth commands the wildlife imagination quite like the East African savanna. Stretching across Tanzania and Kenya in a mosaic of golden grassland, acacia woodland, and seasonal wetland, the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem is home to the largest overland animal migration on the planet — an event so vast and so primal that witnessing it resets something fundamental in the human psyche.

The Great Migration

Each year, approximately 1.5 million wildebeest, 400,000 zebras, and 200,000 gazelles complete a 1,800-kilometre circular journey through the Serengeti in Tanzania and the Masai Mara in Kenya, driven entirely by rainfall and the growth of fresh grass. The migration has no leader. There is no master plan. It is hunger and instinct and the accumulated wisdom of millions of years of evolution moving as a single, thundering mass.

Iconic Animals of the Serengeti and Masai Mara

• African Lion (Panthera leo) — Vulnerable: The Serengeti supports approximately 3,000 lions, one of the largest remaining populations in Africa. Lions here live in prides of up to 30 individuals and have evolved complex hunting strategies unique to open-grassland environments.
• African Elephant (Loxodonta africana) — Vulnerable: The Serengeti-Mara ecosystem hosts thousands of savanna elephants. These animals display extraordinary social intelligence — they mourn their dead, recognise themselves in mirrors, and communicate through infrasound over distances of several kilometres.
• Cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) — Vulnerable: Fewer than 7,000 cheetahs remain in the wild globally. The Serengeti’s open plains offer some of the best remaining cheetah habitat on Earth, where individuals can reach speeds of 112 km/h over short bursts.
• Black Rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis) — Critically Endangered: Once numbering over 70,000 across Africa, black rhino populations crashed to approximately 2,500 by the 1990s due to poaching. Intensive conservation efforts have partially recovered the species to around 6,500 individuals today — a hard-won success story.
• African Wild Dog (Lycaon pictus) — Endangered: With only 6,600 individuals remaining across the continent, the African wild dog is among Africa’s most endangered carnivores. Their cooperative hunting success rate — around 80% — exceeds that of lions and cheetahs combined.
• Masai Giraffe (Giraffa tippelskirchi) — Endangered: The tallest animal on Earth, feeding on acacia leaves that no other large herbivore can reach. Giraffe populations have declined by 40% in 30 years, a crisis so underreported it has been called a “silent extinction.”

Best Time to Visit

July to October is prime season for the river crossings at the Masai Mara. January to March is ideal for witnessing wildebeest calving in the southern Serengeti — over 8,000 calves are born every single day during the peak calving season, and predator action is extraordinary. The dry season (June to October) offers the best general game viewing across both ecosystems as animals concentrate around water sources.

🦧 Asian Rainforests — Borneo and the Indian Subcontinent

Asia’s great forests hold a different kind of magic from the open savannas of Africa. Here, life operates in dense, layered secrecy — in the canopy a hundred feet overhead, in the tangled undergrowth below, in rivers the colour of dark tea. Finding wildlife in Asian rainforests requires patience, silence, and a willingness to be humbled by how much the forest conceals.

Borneo — Heart of the Ancient Forest

Borneo hosts one of the oldest rainforests on Earth, estimated to be approximately 130 million years old — predating the Amazon by tens of millions of years. This evolutionary antiquity has produced extraordinary biodiversity: over 15,000 species of plants, 221 species of mammals, and more than 420 bird species. The island is shared between Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei, and it is under siege. Borneo has lost more than half of its lowland forest in the past 50 years, largely to palm oil expansion.

• Bornean Orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) — Critically Endangered: Orangutans share approximately 97% of their DNA with humans. They are the world’s largest arboreal mammals, spending most of their lives in the canopy. Bornean orangutan populations have declined by more than 50% in 60 years, with fewer than 104,000 remaining.
• Pygmy Elephant (Elephas maximus borneensis) — Endangered: Found only in the lowland forests of northeast Borneo, these are the world’s smallest elephants — and among the gentlest. Only approximately 1,500 remain.
• Clouded Leopard (Neofelis diardi) — Vulnerable: One of the most secretive big cats on Earth, almost never seen in the wild. The Bornean clouded leopard has the largest canine teeth relative to body size of any living feline.
• Proboscis Monkey (Nasalis larvatus) — Endangered: Found nowhere else on Earth, this extraordinary primate with its pendulous nose is a flagship species of Borneo’s mangrove and riverside forests. Population has declined by at least 50% in the last 40 years.

India — Tigers, Rhinos, and Wild Elephants

India is one of the most remarkable conservation success stories of the modern era. Project Tiger, launched in 1973 with only 9 tiger reserves, has grown to 53 reserves today. India’s wild tiger population — once reduced to approximately 1,800 individuals — now stands at over 3,682 according to the 2022 census, representing more than 75% of the world’s remaining wild tigers. It is proof that conservation can work when governments commit to it.

• Bengal Tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) — Endangered: India’s most iconic wildlife success. Ranthambore, Bandhavgarh, and Kanha National Parks offer some of the world’s best tiger viewing.
• Indian One-Horned Rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis) — Vulnerable: Recovered from fewer than 200 individuals in the early 20th century to over 4,000 today, largely thanks to Kaziranga National Park in Assam.
• Snow Leopard (Panthera uncia) — Vulnerable: An estimated 4,000–6,500 snow leopards remain across Central Asia’s mountain ranges. In India, Ladakh and Himachal Pradesh offer rare sighting opportunities.
• Asiatic Lion (Panthera leo persica) — Endangered: Found only in Gir National Park, Gujarat. The entire wild population — approximately 674 individuals — lives within this single forest reserve.

Best Time to Visit

For Borneo’s wildlife, March to October is generally optimal, with river cruises on the Kinabatangan River offering exceptional encounters year-round. For India’s national parks, February to May is the prime tiger season, when water scarcity concentrates animals around waterholes and the dry forest makes sighting easier. Parks close during monsoon (June to September).

🐧 Arctic and Antarctic — Life at the Extremes

At the poles, life has made a bargain with impossibility. The animals that survive here do not merely tolerate extreme cold — they have been shaped by it, refined by it, made extraordinary by millions of years of selection pressure in environments where most creatures would perish within hours. These are the Earth’s most dramatic wildernesses, and they are changing faster than anywhere else on the planet.

The Arctic — A World Built on Ice

The Arctic is warming at four times the global average rate. Sea ice that once persisted year-round now retreats dramatically each summer, fundamentally altering the ecosystem upon which millions of animals depend. The Arctic Ocean, the tundra of Canada, Greenland, Scandinavia, and Russia — these are landscapes being rewritten in real time by climate change.

• Polar Bear (Ursus maritimus) — Vulnerable: Approximately 26,000 polar bears remain globally, distributed across 19 subpopulations. At least three of those subpopulations are currently in decline. Polar bears depend entirely on sea ice for hunting ringed seals — as ice diminishes, so does their access to food.
• Arctic Wolf (Canis lupus arctos) — Least Concern: One of the few large predators whose habitat is largely inaccessible to humans, the Arctic wolf has been spared the persecution that decimated wolves elsewhere. They hunt muskox and Arctic hare across Canada’s High Arctic islands.
• Narwhal (Monodon monoceros) — Least Concern: The unicorn of the sea, whose extraordinary tusk — a spiralled canine tooth that can reach 3 metres — remains one of evolution’s most debated adaptations. Approximately 170,000 narwhals survive in Arctic waters.
• Walrus (Odobenus rosmarus) — Vulnerable: As sea ice retreats, walrus increasingly haul out on land in massive, crowded groups — a behaviour that leads to fatal stampedes when polar bears or aircraft cause panic among tens of thousands of animals crowded onto narrow beaches.

“The Arctic is not a barren wasteland. It is one of the most productive ecosystems on Earth — and one of the most imperilled. What happens there will determine what happens everywhere.” — Dr. Jane Francis, British Antarctic Survey

Antarctica — The Last True Wilderness

Antarctica is the only continent on Earth with no indigenous human population and no permanent human settlement outside of research stations. It is governed by the Antarctic Treaty System, which designates the continent as a scientific preserve. The wildlife here is staggering in its abundance — not diversity, but sheer, overwhelming numbers concentrated along the ice-free coastlines.

• Emperor Penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri) — Near Threatened: The largest penguin species, standing nearly 1.2 metres tall. Emperor penguins breed in the depths of the Antarctic winter, with males incubating eggs in temperatures of -60°C. Climate models suggest that by 2100, 70–80% of emperor penguin colonies could be quasi-extinct if sea ice loss continues at current rates.
• Weddell Seal (Leptonychotes weddellii): The world’s most southerly breeding mammal, capable of diving to 600 metres and holding its breath for over 80 minutes.
• Humpback Whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) — Least Concern: Once hunted to near-extinction by commercial whaling, humpback whale populations have recovered significantly since the international whaling moratorium. The waters around Antarctica are among the richest feeding grounds on Earth.

Best Time to Visit

For Antarctica, November to March is the austral summer, when wildlife activity peaks and cruise ships can navigate the Southern Ocean. November brings penguin courtship and egg-laying; December and January offer 24-hour daylight and hatching chicks; February and March see the largest whale concentrations. Arctic expeditions are best undertaken June to August for maximum sea ice retreat and wildlife access.

🦅 The Americas — Amazon to Yellowstone

The Western Hemisphere contains two of the planet’s most extraordinary wildlife ecosystems: the Amazon Basin, the most biodiverse terrestrial environment in existence, and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the largest intact temperate-zone ecosystem in the northern hemisphere. Together, they represent the full spectrum of what wild America looks and sounds and feels like.

The Amazon — Earth’s Greatest Forest

The Amazon rainforest covers approximately 5.5 million square kilometres across nine South American countries, representing over half of the world’s remaining tropical rainforest. It is home to an estimated 10% of all species on Earth — many of them still unknown to science. Researchers discover an average of two new species per day in the Amazon, a rate that speaks to how much remains undocumented in the planet’s richest ecosystem.

• Jaguar (Panthera onca) — Near Threatened: The largest cat in the Americas and the third-largest in the world. The jaguar’s range has shrunk by more than 40% since European colonisation. The Pantanal region of Brazil offers the world’s best jaguar viewing — some lodges report near-daily sightings from riverboats.
• Giant Otter (Pteronura brasiliensis) — Endangered: Up to 1.8 metres long — the world’s largest otter — giant otters hunt cooperatively in family groups and communicate through a repertoire of at least 22 distinct vocalisations. Fewer than 5,000 remain in the wild.
• Harpy Eagle (Harpia harpyja) — Vulnerable: With talons the size of a grizzly bear’s claws, the harpy eagle is the most powerful bird of prey in the Americas, capable of snatching monkeys and sloths directly from the forest canopy.
• Amazon River Dolphin (Inia geoffrensis) — Endangered: Also known as the pink river dolphin or boto, this freshwater dolphin navigates the Amazon’s flooded forests using echolocation. It holds a central place in Amazonian mythology, said to transform into a handsome man who lures villagers to the river.
• Giant Anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla) — Vulnerable: Can eat up to 35,000 ants and termites in a single day using a tongue that extends 60 centimetres and flicks 150 times per minute.

Yellowstone and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem

Yellowstone is the oldest national park in the world, established in 1872. But it is more than a park — it is the beating heart of an 18-million-acre ecosystem that includes parts of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. Yellowstone’s 1995 wolf reintroduction is one of the most celebrated experiments in rewilding history: reintroducing just 31 wolves triggered a cascade of ecological changes — what biologists call a “trophic cascade” — that altered the behaviour of elk, regenerated willow and aspen stands, stabilised riverbanks, and even changed the course of rivers.

• Gray Wolf (Canis lupus) — Least Concern globally, but delisted in the US: Yellowstone now hosts approximately 500 wolves across the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The Lamar Valley offers some of the world’s best wolf-watching opportunities.
• Grizzly Bear (Ursus arctos horribilis) — Threatened in the US: The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem supports approximately 1,000 grizzly bears. Watching a grizzly excavating a hillside for ground squirrels, or fishing for cutthroat trout in the Yellowstone River, is one of North America’s defining wildlife experiences.
• American Bison (Bison bison) — Near Threatened: Yellowstone is the only place in the US where bison have lived continuously since prehistoric times. From a low of approximately 23 individuals in 1902, the park’s herd has recovered to over 5,000 — a conservation triumph that resonates through every visit to the Lamar Valley in winter.
• Pronghorn (Antilocapra americana): The fastest land animal in the Western Hemisphere, capable of sustained speeds of 88 km/h. Pronghorn undertake the longest land migration in the continental United States — 240 kilometres between Wyoming’s Upper Green River Basin and Grand Teton National Park.

Best Time to Visit

The Amazon is accessible year-round, but June to November (dry season) is generally preferred for ground-level wildlife encounters, while December to May (wet season) opens up the flooded forest to canoe expeditions. For Yellowstone, April to May brings new wolf pups, calving bison, and bears emerging from hibernation. September to October delivers the elk rut — one of North America’s most dramatic wildlife spectacles.

🦘 Australia — A World Apart

Australia is the most extraordinary natural experiment in vertebrate evolution on Earth. Separated from other landmasses for approximately 45 million years, the continent developed an almost entirely unique fauna — a world of marsupials, monotremes, and endemic reptiles that evolved in magnificent isolation. Roughly 87% of Australia’s mammals, 93% of its reptiles, and 45% of its bird species are found nowhere else on Earth. That isolation that made Australia’s wildlife so unique has also made it uniquely vulnerable to introduced species, habitat clearing, and climate-driven change.

• Platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) — Near Threatened: The platypus is so evolutionarily improbable that when the first specimen reached European scientists in 1799, they assumed it was a hoax. A venomous, egg-laying, duck-billed, beaver-tailed, otter-footed mammal that detects prey through electroreception. Platypus populations have declined significantly in recent decades due to drought, habitat degradation, and invasive species.
• Tasmanian Devil (Sarcophilus harrisii) — Endangered: The world’s largest surviving carnivorous marsupial, decimated by a transmissible facial tumour disease that has killed approximately 80% of the wild population since the 1990s. Conservation programs are reintroducing disease-resistant individuals to both Tasmania and, for the first time in 3,000 years, mainland Australia.
• Quokka (Setonix brachyurus) — Vulnerable: Found primarily on Rottnest Island off the coast of Perth, quokkas are famous for their apparent smile — a combination of facial musculature and a mouth that curves upward. They are utterly fearless around humans, a trait that has made them social media icons and conservation ambassadors simultaneously.
• Saltwater Crocodile (Crocodylus porosus) — Least Concern: The largest living reptile on Earth, capable of exceeding 6 metres in length and 1,000 kilograms. Australia’s northern rivers, wetlands, and estuaries support approximately 100,000 saltwater crocodiles — the largest population in the world.
• Wedge-tailed Eagle (Aquila audax): Australia’s largest bird of prey, with a wingspan reaching 2.3 metres. Wedge-tails can soar to altitudes of 1,800 metres and have been documented attacking paragliders in defence of territory.
• Southern Right Whale (Eubalaena australis) — Least Concern: The Great Australian Bight is one of the most important calving grounds for southern right whales, which were hunted to near-extinction by the 19th century. Australia’s Head of Bight in South Australia offers cliff-top viewing of mothers and calves from June to October.

Australia’s Marine World

The Great Barrier Reef — the largest living structure on Earth, visible from space — stretches 2,300 kilometres along the Queensland coast and contains more species of fish than the entire Atlantic Ocean. However, coral bleaching events driven by rising ocean temperatures have now affected approximately 50% of the reef’s coral cover. The reef is at a crossroads, and what happens to it in the coming decades will define Australia’s relationship with the wild world it has inherited.

Best Time to Visit

April to September is the dry season across northern Australia — the best time for Kakadu, Arnhem Land, and the Kimberley. The east coast and reef are excellent year-round, though the marine stinger season (November to May) warrants precautions in tropical waters. For whale watching on the southern coast, June to October is optimal. Kangaroo Island in South Australia offers reliable wildlife encounters in any season.

🌿 The Conservation Reality — Why This Map Matters

Every region on this map is both a celebration and a warning. The wildlife you have read about here — the lions and orangutans, the polar bears and harpy eagles, the platypus and the jaguar — are not historical curiosities. They are alive right now, navigating a world that has been fundamentally transformed by human activity in a geological eyeblink. Many of them are hanging on by their claws, their flippers, their wings.

The numbers are sobering: the IUCN Red List currently documents over 44,000 species threatened with extinction, including 41% of all amphibians, 36% of reef-forming corals, 34% of all conifers, 26% of mammals, and 14% of birds. The primary drivers are habitat loss and degradation, overexploitation, invasive species, pollution, and climate change — all of them human-caused, and all of them therefore within human power to address.

“We are the first generation to feel the effect of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it.” — Barack Obama

But conservation works. The stories embedded in this map prove it: India’s tiger recovery, Africa’s black rhino rebound, Yellowstone’s wolf reintroduction, Antarctica’s protection under international law, the recovery of humpback whale populations after commercial whaling ended. When humans choose to protect wild places and wild animals, the results can be extraordinary. The question is whether we will choose to do so at the scale and speed the crisis demands.

Responsible wildlife tourism is a meaningful part of the answer. Ecotourism generates over $600 billion per year globally and is one of the fastest-growing segments of the travel industry. When tourism revenue flows directly to local communities and conservation programs, it creates powerful economic incentives to protect wildlife rather than exploit it. The decision to visit these places — and to do so thoughtfully, with reputable operators who prioritise animal welfare and habitat protection — is itself an act of conservation.

🗺️ Begin Your Journey

This map is a beginning, not an ending. Every region described here contains depths that no single article can fully capture — entire ecosystems, entire species accounts, entire communities of people who have dedicated their lives to protecting these places. We invite you to keep exploring.

Dive into our individual region guides to plan your visit, understand what to expect, and learn how to travel in a way that contributes to conservation rather than undermining it. Discover species profiles that go beyond the famous faces — the lesser-known animals whose quiet existence underpins the ecosystems you came to see. Read about the conservation organisations working on the front lines, and find out how your support — financial, political, or simply vocal — can make a difference.

The wild world is still out there. Magnificent, tenacious, and in urgent need of witnesses who give a damn. Let Jungal Safari be your guide.