About Queen Elizabeth National Park

Queen Elizabeth National Park is understandably Uganda’s most popular national park. With its diverse ecosystems, which include sprawling savanna, shady, humid forest, sparkling lakes and fertile wetlands, Queen Elizabeth National Park is ideal habitat for a safari in Africa. The park is home to classic big game, ten primate species including chimpanzees and over 600 species of birds.

Set against the magnificent backdrop of the jagged Rwenzori Mountains (the mountains of the moon), the park’s magnificent vistas include 72 enormous craters carved brutally into rolling green hills, panoramic views of the Kazinga channel with its banks lined with hippos, buffalo and elephants, and the endless Ishasha plains, whose fig trees hide lions ready to pounce on herds of unsuspecting Uganda kob.

Biodiversity

From open savannah to rain forest, from dense papyrus swamps and brooding crater lakes to the vastness of Lake Edward, it is little wonder that QENP boasts one of the highest biodiversity ratings of any game reserve in the world.

Almost 100 mammal species and a remarkable 606 bird species makes this superb safari territory, with elephant, a profusion of hippos, the elusive giant forest hog and handsome Uganda kob all regularly sighted around the tourist village on the Mweya Peninsula – which also boasts a marvelous waterfront setting in the shadow of the Rwenzori Mountains.

Elsewhere, the remote Ishasha Sector is famed for its tree-climbing lions, the Kyambura Gorge harbors habituated chimps, the Maramagambo Forest is home to an alluring selection of forest monkeys and birds, and flocks of flamingo are resident on the crater lakes.

About the Park

The 1978km2 Queen Elizabeth National Park enjoys a stunning location on the rift valley floor between Lakes Edward and George where a mosaic of habitats supports 95 mammal species and a remarkable 612 species of birds. Forty years ago, Douglas Willocks described the diverse features that led to its creation in 1952. There still exists no better introduction or a more enticing invitation to visit the park.

‘Scenically the area had everything. Thirty miles to the north, the blue Rwenzori exploded from the plain, a composite, jagged mass of mountains, sixty miles long and forty wide and looking in certain lights as if you could reach out and touch them. Across Lake Edward to the west, the Mitumbe hills stood sentinel on the Congo, blue too in the long sight but in the closer green, wooded, precipitous, unfriendly and epitomizing darkest Africa. The eastern boundary of this possible park was marked by the calm green escarpment of the western Rift Valley. And between all the hills, mountains and lakes was endless savanna, its constantly repeated motif the branched cactus arms of the candelabra euphorbia tree.’

The park forms part of an extensive system of contiguous protected areas, namely the Kigezi (265km2) and Kyambura (154km2) Wildlife Reserves, Kalinzu Forest Reserve, Kibale National Park (766km2) and, in neighboring DRC, the 2000km2 Virunga National Park. Rwenzori Mountains National Park lies a few kilometers north.

The dramatic scenery is largely due to mountains beyond the park boundary. The park itself lies on the rift valley floor where it rises 480m from 91 Om at the Kazinga Channel to 1390m in the Explosion Crater field. The low altitude and its location directly on the equator mean that temperatures can be warm, rising from a mean minimum of 18°C to a mean maximum of 28°C. The park receives up to 1250mm of rain, mostly during March – May and September – November.