Primate Safaris
Contact us
T : +256 392 159 498
T : +9 1 9544 666 665
E : info@primatesafaris.com
Primate Safaris
Contact us
T : +256 392 159 498
T : +9 1 9544 666 665
E : info@primatesafaris.com
National Park
Virunga National Park.
About the Park
Established in 1925 to protect the mountain gorillas of the Virunga volcanoes, Virunga National Park has spent the century since quietly accumulating superlatives. With a bird checklist of 706 different species, more birds than in the entire United States of America, it is the most biodiverse protected area on the African continent. It contains the largest concentration of hippopotamuses in Africa, 20,000 individuals living on the banks of Lake Edward and along the great rivers of eastern Congo. Both savanna elephants and forest elephants reside here, one of the few places in the world where both species coexist. And it does all of this against a backdrop of active volcanoes, Rwenzori peaks, and a landscape so varied it encompasses equatorial forest, high alpine moorland, savanna grassland, and volcanic lava fields within a single park boundary.
At its heart, as it has always been, are the gorillas. Mountain gorillas in the volcanic south. Eastern lowland gorillas in the lowland forest. Twenty-two primate species in total, three of them critically endangered mountain gorillas, eastern lowland gorillas, and chimpanzees, all sharing a park that has fought, sometimes at terrible human cost, to keep them alive. Over 800 rangers protect Virunga around the clock, in a region that has known armed conflict for decades. They do it because they understand that what lives inside these borders cannot be replaced. Not anywhere. Not ever.
Mount Nyiragongo, one of the world's most active volcanoes, rises within the park's southern sector, its summit crater holding a permanent lava lake that glows orange against the night sky in one of the most dramatic natural spectacles on earth. To hike to its rim at dusk and watch the lava churn in the darkness below is to feel the planet's raw, volcanic energy in a way that no words adequately describe.
The okapi, endemic to the tropical forests of the DRC, once thought locally extinct, has rebounded in the park since its rediscovery in 2006. This extraordinary animal, striped like a zebra, bodied like a horse, related to the giraffe, moves through the northern forest as it has for millennia, shy and solitary and magnificent.
Virunga is not an easy park to visit. Its security situation is complex and requires careful planning with trusted operators. But for those who come for the gorillas, the volcano, the hippos on Lake Edward, the 706 species of birds, the okapi in the northern forest, it is not simply a safari. It is a confrontation with what is most ancient and most precious about the natural world.
Wildlife
- Elephant
- Gorilla
- Chimpanzee
- Warthog
- Crocodile
- Vulture
- African Fish Eagle
- Hornbill
- Pelican
- Crowned Crane
- Baboon
- Colobus Monkey
- Chameleon
- Monitor Lizard
- Okapi
- Galago (bushbaby)
- Lilac-breasted Roller
- Kingfisher
- Weaver Bird