Only seven years ago, the Grumeti Reserves adjoining the world- famous Serengeti National Park were rife with illegal poachers fuelling the bush meat trade.
Remaining wildlife was skittish and native trees were being cleared. In stepped Paul Tudor Jones, successful American billionaire and Africa aficionado, up for a new challenge.
Thanks to him and other role-players, a critical link in the ceaseless, cyclical wildebeest migration has been restored and is now managed, adding to the long-term viability of the Serengeti-Mara system.
Tanzania's Grumeti Game Reserves are a wonderful success story - 350 000 hectares of protected savannah that are far more than a playground for affluent tourists.
What has been achieved in a short space of time is remarkable in anyone's conservation book.
Wildlife is thriving once again and adjoining communities are enjoying the spoils, being far better off than they were a decade ago.
The Grumeti Reserves make up the western finger of the greater Serengeti-Mara ecosystem and form a needed buffer zone between populace communal areas and the Serengeti itself.
Tudor Jones needed a partner to manage the tourism aspect of the reserve and joined forces with the Singita Group. The Serengeti ecosystem is renowned for its wildlife migration: more than a million wildebeest, 250 000 zebra, 12 000 eland, 500 000 gazelles and an entourage of ravenous predators make for one of the greatest wildlife shows left on Earth today.
These ungulates undertake an annual 800km trek in search of food, water and to breed.
The seething wildebeest herds pass through the Singita Grumeti Reserves in July which is also the rutting season when bulls demarcate temporary territories and court females. Visitors to Grumeti at this time will be surrounded by wildebeest day and night - fighting, grunting and courting.
They bump into the canvas walls of your tent at Sabora Tented Camp - utter wildlife chaos.
Other evening tenors at this time include lions and whooping hyaenas all keen to prey on the odd-looking wildebeest that clearly have other things on their minds.
The herds then head into the Maasai Mara in Kenya but have to overcome one last major obstacle - crossing the crocodile-infested Grumeti River.
Unfolding scenes of wildebeest crashing through the river and two-metre crocodiles picking them off is what many come to see.
Visiting in February, I wondered how much wildlife we would see as, at this time, most of the wildebeest are calving on the short grass plains of the southern Serengeti.
My concerns were short-lived - on the drive from the airstrip to camp we saw a gob-smacking amount of wildlife. The plains were not wall-to-wall wildebeest but strewn with an incredible species mix: topi, zebra, white-bearded wildebeest, Thomson's and Grant's gazelle. The scale of the scenery was epic and one gained a sense of a holistically functioning ecosystem totally untouched by man.
It took a lot of hard work, though, to get what we were seeing.
Although it was gazetted as three concession areas in 1995, things only changed in 2002 when Tudor Jones got involved. Grumeti Reserve is leased from the government as a hunting concession and the annual hunting quotas still have to be paid, even though no hunting takes place anymore.
Through the efforts of the Grumeti Community and Wildlife Conservation Fund (GCWCF) initiated by Tudor Jones and South African Brian Harris, plus the thrust of a wildlife monitoring programme backed by anti-poaching scouts, killing for the bush meat trade is being eradicated.
Wildlife numbers have all flourished. Game species like buffalo, eland, topi, zebra and Thompson's gazelle have all recovered remarkably. Predators are thriving too: lions are increasing annually and pride dynamics once disturbed by hunting are settling down.
Spotted hyaena is common and cheetah is seen far more often. The most ambitious project currently for Grumeti is the re-introduction of the East African sub-species of black rhino almost wiped out in the Serengeti-Mara system in the 1980s.
Twenty-five rhino have been earmarked for establishing a new population of this unique sub-species.
It took us ages to get to camp as there was so much to see, smell and take in. Wildlife photographers will be in their element - subjects abound everywhere and action is incessant. We opted to stay at Sabora Tented Camp, which can only be described as something straight from the movie Out of Africa.
The word tent does not do justice to the rooms - they are expansive suites with an attached library/lounge. Placed on an open grassy plain this camp is safari 1920s style complete with finery and artefacts of this bygone era.
Nice touches are the brass bedsteads placed under the trees for relaxation with a book and an eye on passing wildlife. I was content with spending the midday period looking for birds around camp but there is a tennis court if you fancy something more strenuous.
Our days started with a sunrise cup of coffee as we gazed over the Sabora Plain before dragging ourselves away on game drives in search of the Reserve's 400 bird and 75 mammal species. Cat sightings were awesome. A lactating and obviously hungry lioness, probably hiding recently-born cubs nearby, was found showing a keen interest in some warthog, while another large pride displayed their tree-climbing antics.
The Serengeti is textbook cheetah habitat and we had several sightings of these agile felines.
Spotted hyaena was the most common predator by far - their heads often simply seen sticking out of the grass. Other mega-fauna included impressive buffalo herds, loads of distinctly-patterned Maasai giraffe and the odd elephant.
The Grumeti also hosts many endemic birds not found in southern Africa. Species like Rufous-tailed Weaver, Fischer's Lovebird, Grey-breasted Spurfowl and Usambiro Barbet were easily ticked.
The Grumeti's successes would not have been possible without the buy-in of local people, and the challenge has been filtering benefits to them and instilling a sense of worth in conservation.
Community projects have included sinking boreholes for drinking water, a biogas scheme as cheap energy source, an indigenous re-forestation programme and establishing a lucrative cash crop of Artemisia - a Chinese medicinal herb used as an active ingredient in anti-malaria drugs.
Our visit, although not in the time of the famed river crossings or migrating mass of animals, still exceeded my wildest dreams.
If money is less of a concern, Sabora Tented Camp is an ideal choice as part of a greater safari through Tanzania.
Prepare to be pampered and spoiled no end in the lap of luxury while savouring some of the best wildlife experiences I have yet experienced on the African continent.
