Garamba National Park, Democratic Republic of Congo is a World Heritage Site in the country. It is one of Africa’s oldest national parks. The Garamba National Park, Democratic Republic of Congo was added to the list of World Heritage Sites in the year 1996.
The dense savannahs, grasslands and woodlands bordered with gallery forests along river banks and swampy depressions provide shelter to a wide range of animals. These include elephant, giraffe, hippopotamus and above all the endangered northern white rhinoceros. The white rhino is interestingly the biggest attraction. It is much larger than the black rhino and only some 30 individuals remain.
Garamba National Park, Democratic Republic of Congo is spread over an area of 492,000 hectare. The park is contiguous on the northeast with the Lantoto national park in Sudan. In the Democratic Republic of Congo it is surrounded by the Reserve Azande to the west, Reserve Mondo-Missa to the east and Reserve Gangala and Bodio to the south.
The park covers three biomes which include gallery forest with forest clumps and marshland; aquatic and semi-aquatic associations; and savannas ranging from dense savanna woodland to nearly treeless grassland. In the center of the park the dense savanna, gallery forests, and the papyrus marshes give way to more open tree-bush savanna, which gets mingled into the long grass savanna that covers most of the park.
There are approximately 1,000 vascular plant species. About 5% of them are endemic. Many useful plants are also found growing in the park.
The park also contains Loxodonta Africana elephants which is an intermediary form between the forest and savanna sub-species. Other mammals include northern savanna giraffe, hippopotamus, buffalo, hartebeest, waterbuck, chimpananzee, olive baboon, and 4 other species of monkey, 2 species of otter, and 5 species of mongoose, golden cat, leopard, lion, warthog aethiopicus, roan antelope and 6 other antelope species.
Garamba Park also houses the African Elephant Domestication Center at Gangala-na-Bodio. The Garamba Rehabilitation Project catches young elephants to be trained for visitor use. A successful tourist operation was tried, using saddles for elephant-back safaris.
Detailed online information on Garamba National Park, Democratic Republic of Congo can be obtained in travel.mapsofworld
