Kissama National Park
Kissama National Park is Angola’s oldest and most famous nature reserve, starting 70 km from its capital, Luanda. The park covers an area of 10,000 km², has an elongated shape and is bounded by 120 kilometers of Atlantic Ocean coastline, the Kwaza and Longa rivers.
Flora and fauna
Kisama National Park amazes travelers with the diversity of plant and animal life. Here you can see elephant, hippo, leopard, antelope, jackal and other representatives of fauna. The rarest inhabitants of the park are black sable, antelope, manatee, red buffalo, turtles, hippopotamus, jackal, warthog, leopard, sirens, herbivorous whales. Some animals are on the verge of extinction, so they are subject to special monitoring. Kisama National Park is home to many animals listed in the Red Book. They are protected by international organizations.
.Much of the park is covered by tall grass savannahs, which has provided spectacular plant life. Although, the flora and fauna of Kisama Park have been greatly reduced due to the formerly thriving poaching and the 20-year war..
History
Kisama was founded by the colonial government of Angola in 1938. It was granted the status of National Park in 1957.
Under Portuguese rule, the park was home to a huge number of animals, but during nearly 30 years of civil war and intervention in Angola, locals reduced the park’s inhabitants to almost zero.
In 2001, the Kisama Foundation conducted Operation Noah’s Ark: a large number of animals, including elephants, were transported from overpopulated reserves in Botswana and South Africa to Kisama National Park. As a result, wildlife populations in the park have gradually recovered over the past 10 years. The Angolan government has declared the task of reviving the park’s former glory a priority for the next 20 years; in particular, a modern tourist complex is going to be built at the mouth of the Kwanza River.
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