Friday, June 24, 2016


Virunga National Park


Virunga National Park (covering an area of 790,000 ha) comprises an outstanding diversity of habitats, ranging from swamps and steppes to the snowfields of Rwenzori at an altitude of over 5,000 m, and from lava plains to the savannahs on the slopes of volcanoes. Mountain gorillas are found in the park, some 20,000 hippopotamuses live in the rivers and birds from Siberia spend the winter there.

http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/63


Virunga National Park covers an area of 7 active volcanoes with a high diversity in plants and animals. Vulnerable or endangered species that live here include the hippopotamus, the mountain gorilla, the lowland gorilla and the eastern chimpanzee.

Covering 7,800 km2 , the Virunga National Park lies in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, bordering Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda and Rwenzori Mountains National Park in Uganda. It was established in 1925 as Africa's first national park (then called Albert National Park), in order to protect the mountain gorillas. From the mid-1980s poaching and the Congo Civil War have seriously damaged the park’s forests and its wildlife population. The site has been In Danger since 1994. Since then 130 park rangers have been killed in the line of duty.

Varying in altitude from 680 m to 5,109 m, Virunga has a wide range of habitats: from savannah and marshlands to permanent glaciers and snow. It covers the western shores of Lake Edward, known for its 20,000 hippopotamuses. The Ruwenzori Mountains lie on the Ugandan border and rise to alpine meadows and a glacier, while Nyiragongo and Nyamuragira are the most active African volcanoes with substantial associated lava plains. 

http://www.worldheritagesite.org/sites/site.php?id=63

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