Nimule-Nationalpark

IUCN category unknown - '

BWf1

The Nimule National Park is a national park in the south of South Sudan on the border with Uganda. It is 410 square kilometers in size and is located at 600 to 700 m above sea level. It received its name from the border town of Nimule. Annual rainfall varies from year to year 900-1800 mm.

The White Nile is around 48 km for the eastern boundary of this park. Further east on the north by the Assua River, on the east bounded by the road between Juba and Nimule buffer zone connects. Through the Nimule National Park Kayu, which rises in Uganda and flows into the White Nile flows.

The landscape is characterized by hilly, partly with stock of trees savannah country. This is mainly formed by acacias, Wüstendatteln and Langfädenart Combretum aculeatum. Along the permanent or seasonal watercourses there is River Forest. Here grows the Ethiopian Palmyra palm and acacia Acacia sieberiana. 16 % of the area is covered by forest, 82 % of bushland.

In Nimule National Park is home to Uganda Kobantilopen, waterbuck and some other species of antelope and buffalo, hippos and crocodiles. The elephants were hunted during the Civil War because of their ivory from the local population, but according to information by park rangers about 350 specimens from Uganda have immigrated. Many herds of other species, have fled to the Sudd, a wetland.

It could happen in the national park are endemic in Sudan butterflies Capys bamptoni, Charaxes amandae, Chloroselas taposana, Lepidochrysops albilinea, Lepidochrysops nigrita and Leptomyrina sudanica. The Nimule National Park is an Important Bird Area. It borders on two other IBAs in Uganda, Mount Kei Forest Reserve and the Mount Otzi Forest Reserve.

The Nimule National Park was established in 1935 as a game reserve in 1954 and declared a National Park. He suffered heavily from poaching, which among other things, the white rhino in this area has been eradicated. The 190 park rangers, many of them former soldiers of the SPLM, to 20 automatic firearms, a jeep and two motorcycles share.

According proclaimed the end of 2007 plans of the Nimule National Park is to be the first reserve in South Sudan after the Civil War established for ecotourism. For this purpose, a document emanating from the colonial era hotel building has already been renovated.