The Sonoma Serengeti — a 400-acre African wildlife preserve in the Mayacamas Mountains.
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Visit WebsiteThe three-hour Classic Safari — a Vietnam-era M37 Power Wagon ride through the four-hundred-acre preserve, naturalist guide, and free-ranging giraffes, cheetahs, zebras and rhinos within feet. Add an overnight in a Botswana tent-cabin and the experience extends to dawn safari with morning calls of the herd.
Safari West Wildlife Preserve is the four-hundred-acre AZA-accredited African wildlife preserve hidden in the Mayacamas Mountains east of Santa Rosa — a category-of-one operation founded in 1993 by Peter Lang and his wife Dr. Nancy Lang, a veterinarian whose conservation work brought 900-plus animals from 90 species to a property that's been called "the Sonoma Serengeti" by every major travel publication that's visited. Cheetahs, giraffes, zebras, rhinos, kudu, and dozens of bird species range across managed habitats designed to mirror the African savannah.
The signature offering is the three-hour Classic Safari — a guided tour aboard restored Vietnam-era M37 Power Wagons, the open-top military vehicles that bounce through the property's trails carrying guests within feet of free-ranging animals. The naturalist guides are exceptional: most have biology backgrounds and personal histories with the animals on the property. Beyond the day tour, Safari West runs thirty luxury tent-cabins imported from Botswana for overnight stays — a sleeping experience where the morning soundtrack is giraffe calls and the breakfast porch overlooks the savannah. The 2017 Tubbs Fire spared the wildlife in part because Peter Lang stayed on the property with a garden hose. The story is now Sonoma County folk legend, and the operation that survived it is one of the most singular wildlife experiences in the United States.
Peter Lang is the co-founder of Safari West, the wildlife preserve he and his wife, Dr. Nancy Lang, built on 400 acres of oak woodland between Santa Rosa and Calistoga. The son of film and television director Otto Lang — whose credits included Daktari, Flipper, and Sea Hunt — he grew up around animals on set, raising lion cubs at thirteen, and kept exotic wildlife on a Beverly Hills ranch through the 1970s. He bought the Sonoma County land in 1989 and began captive-breeding programs for endangered species, working with the San Francisco Zoo, where he met Nancy. His entrepreneurial drive and showman's instinct shaped the preserve, its Botswana-style tent camp, and the open-vehicle safari that opened to the public in 1993.
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Safari West Wildlife Preserve is the four-hundred-acre AZA-accredited African wildlife preserve hidden in the Mayacamas Mountains east of Santa Rosa — a category-of-one operation founded in 1993 by Peter Lang and his wife Dr. Nancy Lang, a veterinarian whose conservation work brought 900-plus animals from 90 species to a property that's been called "the Sonoma Serengeti" by every major travel publication that's visited. Cheetahs, giraffes, zebras, rhinos, kudu, and dozens of bird species range across managed habitats designed to mirror the African savannah.
The signature offering is the three-hour Classic Safari — a guided tour aboard restored Vietnam-era M37 Power Wagons, the open-top military vehicles that bounce through the property's trails carrying guests within feet of free-ranging animals. The naturalist guides are exceptional: most have biology backgrounds and personal histories with the animals on the property. Beyond the day tour, Safari West runs thirty luxury tent-cabins imported from Botswana for overnight stays — a sleeping experience where the morning soundtrack is giraffe calls and the breakfast porch overlooks the savannah. The 2017 Tubbs Fire spared the wildlife in part because Peter Lang stayed on the property with a garden hose. The story is now Sonoma County folk legend, and the operation that survived it is one of the most singular wildlife experiences in the United States.
The three-hour Classic Safari — a Vietnam-era M37 Power Wagon ride through the four-hundred-acre preserve, naturalist guide, and free-ranging giraffes, cheetahs, zebras and rhinos within feet. Add an overnight in a Botswana tent-cabin and the experience extends to dawn safari with morning calls of the herd.
Peter Lang is the co-founder of Safari West, the wildlife preserve he and his wife, Dr. Nancy Lang, built on 400 acres of oak woodland between Santa Rosa and Calistoga. The son of film and television director Otto Lang — whose credits included Daktari, Flipper, and Sea Hunt — he grew up around animals on set, raising lion cubs at thirteen, and kept exotic wildlife on a Beverly Hills ranch through the 1970s. He bought the Sonoma County land in 1989 and began captive-breeding programs for endangered species, working with the San Francisco Zoo, where he met Nancy. His entrepreneurial drive and showman's instinct shaped the preserve, its Botswana-style tent camp, and the open-vehicle safari that opened to the public in 1993.
Dr. Nancy Lang is the co-founder of Safari West and the scientific force behind its conservation and education work. She holds a B.A. and M.A. in biology from San Francisco State University and a Ph.D. from the University of Wales in Cardiff, and spent some two decades at the San Francisco Zoo — where she founded the Avian Conservation Center, built a respected program for breeding and releasing endangered birds of prey, and rose to general curator. An avian biologist and raptor specialist, she met Peter Lang through the zoo's breeding work; the two married and together turned a private breeding project into a public preserve in 1993. She continues to lead Safari West's endangered-species programs.
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