Mgahinga-Gorilla-Nationalpark

The Mgahinga Gorilla National Park in Uganda comprises the underlying portion of the Virunga Volcanoes. Nine individually standing, wooded and active volcanoes forming the Virunga where the border triangle between Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo is located. The park is located about 15 km south of Kisoro in the same district, and forms a geographical unit with the Virunga National Park and the Volcano National Park, which is known as Virunga Conservation Area (VCA ) and covers an area of 434 km ².

The main attraction of the park are - as the name suggests - the rare mountain gorillas. However, since it takes up only 8% of the VCA and also only one habituated to humans ( " habituated " ) houses gorilla group, he is not a reliable starting point for the popular with tourists "Gorilla Tracking ", ie guided hikes to the suspected whereabouts of the animals.

Frequented Stronger therefore, the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park about 60 km to the north, where just over 300 representatives of these species live. A sign of the increasing importance of the tourist mountain gorillas for Uganda is the fact that the endangered animals 2007 and 2010 adorned the back of each banknote highest in the country.

The National Park owes its existence in 1994 under mysterious circumstances in Kisoro who died German zoologist and ethologist Klaus -Jurgen Sucker. Sucker ran from 1988 to 1994, the Mgahinga Gorilla National Park Project ( MGNPP ). The earlier Mgahinga Forest Reserve called wildlife sanctuary was given the status of a national park in May 1991. In June 1992, until then only 24.5 km ² protected area was extended to 33.7 km ². It was the first and only time in the history of mountain gorilla protection that the ever -shrinking habitat of the great apes could be increased.