Facts About Virunga National Park: The park covers an area of over 1.8 million acres and it is located in DR Congo which is found in Central Africa. It was the 1^st National Park to be gazette in Africa and it has it neighbors as Mgahinga gorilla national park in Uganda, Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda, and Rwenzori National Park still in Uganda.

In a year 1979, UNESCO designated the park as a world heritage site. The park has of recent faced a challenge of Poaching and civil war.

In the first time of the park establishment, it was called the Albert National Park and the founder was King Albert 1 of Belgium.

The major or main reason for creating this park was to the endangered mountain gorillas.

Interesting Virunga National Park Facts:

The park was managed well for the good 35 years but in 1960 as DR Congo got its independence from Belgium, the park management started failing to manage the park. In 1969, the newly elected president of DR Congo known as Mobutu reinstalled reservation of the park and it was now renamed as Virunga National Park. In year 1907’s the park got funding’s to help in the conservation works of the park. In 1980, instabilities begun after the president loosing. In 1980, UNESCO decided to change its view of status of the park and it listed it as an endangered park for gorillas because chaos and poaching where the highlights of the park.

Virunga is a famous area for oil mining and is suspected that by the coming years, 80% of the park’s land will be used up. The southern region landscape of the park is composed of old and new lava flow, montane tropical forest, and alpine forests. The central region landscape is composed of African savannah, marshes, riverine forests, and lake shores. The northern region landscape is made up of lake shores, African savannah, riverine forests, alpine forests, and glaciers.

The park faces high rate for the death of poachers. The park hosts about a quarter of the endangered mountain gorillas.  Virunga national park hosts 3 great ape species like chimpanzees, mountain gorilla, and Grauer’s gorillas. Okapi is a giraffe/zebra type specie and is known as endangered and also found in Virunga.