Nyungwe National Park, Rwanda

Credit: Image courtesy the University of Maryland Global Land Cover Facility and the Wildlife Conservation Society, Posted on: Wednesday, 17 March 2004, 06:00 CST Download full size image

One of the richest mountain primate communities in Africa became a national park on March 5, 2004. Home to chimpanzees, Angolan black-and-white colobus monkeys, grey-cheeked mangabeys, and other primates, the Nyungwe National Park covers 970 square kilometers of rainforest, bamboo, grassland, swamps, and bogs in the mountains of Rwanda. In all, the new park boasts 13 different primate species, 260 bird species, and over 260 different types of trees and shrubs. Nyungwe became a forest reserve in 1933 when the surrounding land began to be cleared for farming. Now, over seventy years later, the government of Rwanda has made the reserve a national park. Nyungwe and the neighboring Kibira National Park in Burundi, to the south, together form the largest track of rainforest in eastern Africa.

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