BUREAU DU PARC DE LA GARAMBA
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garamba Park covers almost 14,000 km², including hunting grounds. It is home to immense grassy or wooded savannahs interspersed with gallery forests and swampy depressions. The park is home to the world's four largest land mammals: elephant, rhinoceros, giraffe and hippopotamus. The rivers are home to hippos, Nile crocodiles, monitor lizards and more. And over 300 species of bird have been recorded.
This is one of Africa's oldest national parks, created in 1938. However, until quite recently, thousands of animals were wiped out, mainly as a result of war and poaching. From 22,000 elephants in the 1970s, militarized poachers have reduced the population to less than 1,200 today. As for northern white rhinos, they were poached to total extinction in the early 2000s. The sale of the proceeds of these massacres (horns and ivory) was used to finance criminal activities, wreaking havoc on the populations in the process. The reintroduction of white rhinoceroses is currently being studied and is scheduled for 2023-24. In 2005, African Parks signed a park management agreement with ICCN. Rangers and local communities in the area were granted a higher level of professionalism and security measures. Since then, a significant reduction in illegal activities in the park has been observed; elephant poaching has fallen by 98%, no Rangers have been killed by poachers since 2017, and key wildlife populations are stabilized or increasing. garamba Park guarantees over 500 full-time local jobs and 2,000 indirect jobs. 2022 saw the effective re-launch of the park, officially closed since 1995. Several groups have already visited the park, which is a veritable environmental nugget. The trips are organized by the Kivu Travel agency. At present, access to the park is only possible by chartered plane from Entebbe or Arua in Uganda. Allow an hour's flight from Arua and 2h15 from Entebbe.
The lodge has a dozen comfortable and charming bungalows. A visit to the park can be combined with a visit to the nearby towns of Faradje and Dungu or other places in Haut-Uele province.