Uganda Parks

UGANDA

Bwindi Impenetrable NP

Gazetted as a national park in 1991, this 25,000 year old 331sq km park is Uganda’s most important park. Bwindi has one of Africa’s most diverse flora and fauna, with 45% of the global mountain gorilla population. Gorilla tracking was first established here in 1993. Today 18 habituated gorilla groups can be tracked here. BINP is also a great birding destination with 23 Albertine Rift endemic species. Other attractions include smaller primates such as black-and-white colobus and L’Hoest’s monkey. Bwindi's other major attraction is the opportunity to interact with the Batwa Pygmies. Bwindi is is home to 160 tree and more than 100 fern species. It formed part of the Virunga Mountains in Rwanda until about 500 years ago. It protects a rainforest that receives an average annual rainfall of 1,500mm, a vital catchment area at the source of five major rivers that flow into Lake Edward. The park is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site (1994). A gorilla tracking experience in Bwindi is one of the highlights of a safari in Uganda. product or give more information.

Kibale National Park

Covering an area of 766 sq km, Kibale is Uganda’s premier chimpanzee-tracking destination. Kibale is also great for birding and primates, especially in the Bigodi Wetland Sanctuary. Kibale National Park is dominated by rainforest interspersed with grassland and swamp. More than 200 tree species are found here. Many like mahogany, figs, and other hardwood trees are upto 60m tall. 60 mammal species with 13 primates are recorded here. The primates include Ugandan red colobus, vervet, red-tailed, L’Hoest’s and blue monkeys, Uganda mangabey, black-and-white colobus, olive baboon, chimpanzee (over 1500), and four prosimians. Although difficult to spot, lion, leopard, forest elephant, buffalo, hippo, warthog, giant forest hog, bushpig, bushbuck, sitatunga, and Peter’s, red and blue duikers, are found here. The elephants found in Kibale Forest belong to the forest race - Loxodonta cyclotis, which is smaller and hairier than the more familiar savannah elephant. 370 bird species have been recorded here, including four species not recorded in any other national park - Nahan’s francolin, Cassin’s spinetail, blue-headed bee-eater and lowland masked apalis. The green breasted pitta has also been spotted here.

Mabamba Swamp

The 100km² Mabamba Swamp, near Entebbe, is a Ramsar site and Important Bird Area (IBA) that extends across a shallow marshy bay on the northern shore of Lake Victoria. Over 300 bird species have been recorded here. It is also home to a relict population of sitatunga antelope and more than 200 varieties of butterfly. The prime attraction of Mabamba is the shoebill, also known as the whale-headed stork. Dugout trips into the swamp run out of the tiny village of Mabamba, where the local boaters have organised themselves into a community-based ecotourism project that has also played an important role in conserving the few shoebills left in the area. Even if you are unable to sight a shoebill, the birdlife is fantastic, with a good chance of spotting localised species such as African pygmy goose, lesser jacana, gull-billed tern, blue-breasted bee-eater and the papyrus-specific Carruthers’s cisticola, papyrus gonolek and white-winged warbler.

Murchison Falls NP

Gazetted in 1952, with an area of 3,840km² MFNP is the largest park in Uganda. The park’s most important feature is the Victoria Nile, which bisects it for around 100km as it flows between lakes Kyoga and Albert. The Nile drops 420m in altitude along this relatively short stretch, which incorporates many rapids and two major cataracts, Karuma Falls and Murchison Falls. The Nile divides MFNP into two parts both of which offer land and boat-based game viewing. MFNP includes the Kaniyo Pabidi Forest, where visitors can track a habituated chimpanzee community. The park is also famous for its shoebill population. North of the river, the vegetation broadly consists of tall, green grassland interspersed with isolated stands of borassus palms, acacia trees and riverine woodland. South of the Nile, denser woodland gives way to closed canopy. 755 plant species have been identified in the park. MFNP supports 144 mammal, 556 bird, 51 reptile and 51 amphibian species. During and after the Amin years, wildlife - elephants for ivory, rhino for horn, and antelope for meat - was poached to local extinction here. The wildlife numbers are slowly trickling back. This park is the home of the Rothschild giraffe. 53 species of raptors are found here. This is the best place in East Africa for sightings of the white-crested turaco, red-headed lovebird and red-winged grey warbler. Key birds of the northern plains include Abyssinian ground hornbill, Denham’s bustard, black-headed lapwing and black-billed barbet, while Kaniyo Pabidi supports a wealth of localised forest birds including chocolate-backed kingfisher, green-breasted pitta and East Africa’s only known population of the localised Puvel’s illadopsis.

Queen Elizabeth NP

At 1978 sq km, QENP is Uganda’s most popular national park straddling the equator. It was gazetted Kazinga National Park in 1952, but renamed two years later to commemorate the first visit to Uganda by Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. QENP protects a diverse landscape of rolling grassland, moist acacia woodland, tropical rainforest, volcanic calderas, and a variety of wetlands including lakes Edward and George, the 40km-long Kazinga Channel that connects them, and several freshwater and saline crater lakes. The park’s most popular attraction is a scenic boat trip that runs out of the Mweya Peninsula along the Kazinga Channel past large herds of elephant, buffalo and hippo. Set on the floor of the Albertine Rift, QENP took its present geological shape 3 million years ago, when the uplifting of the Rwenzori Mountains split the Lake Obweruka into what are now lakes Albert, Edward and George. Although geologically calm in recent millennia, the area around lakes Edward and George has been subject to massive tectonic upheaval over the past 500,000 years, as evidenced by a total of at least 35 crater lakes and numerous dry volcanic calderas within 20km of the Kazinga Channel. One needs to spend a week to enjoy the diversity of this park.