Facts About Queen Elizabeth National Park
Facts about Queen Elizabeth National Park; There is factual list of about Queen Elizabeth National Park. Queen Elizabeth National Park is the second largest and oldest national park in Uganda, after Murchison Falls National Park in 1952.
Queen Elizabeth National Park covers an area of about 1978 square kilometers large, habitat with selection of mammals about 95 species ,620 species of birds, crocodiles and different types of antelopes, butterflies many more.
The park hosts the highest concentration of hippos in East Africa; about 5000,3000 elephants and 1000 buffaloes. It is also home to number of antelopes such as Duiker, Reed Buck, Topic and the Statunga antelopes. They can be seen along Kazinga channel in the shrubs. More so, Kazinga channel of Queen Elizabeth National Park habits most of wildlife and it’s the main water source for animals.
Queen Elizabeth National Park is truly a birding site because it endowed with great number of over 600 bird species. That makes it to rank the 2nd best areas for birding in Africa and stands in the 6th position of the world’s birding. More fact, Queen Elizabeth National Park is internationally recognized by the international birding as an important birding area ‘’IBA’’.
Queen Elizabeth National Park lies in the western rift valley arm of Africa and located on the rift valley floor which runs from Uganda to Malawi. Form the terraces of Mweya Safari cottages where you can easily identify the direction of Kazinga channel; it flows west from Lake George to Lake Edward. However, it’s hard to know it’s direction because it’s so slow. Along, the rift valley lakes have a rare largely endemic fish fauna such as Bagrus, Docmac, Sarothenodon Nitocticous and Sarothenodon Leacosticous many more.
Queen Elizabeth National Park was formerly not called by its current name. It is located in western Uganda initially called Kazinga National Park, later after the visit of the Queen of England, Queen Elizabeth 11 visit in 1952, the park was renamed as ‘’Queen Elizabeth National Park’’ perhaps, it is the attribute to its current fame worldwide.
More fact, Queen Elizabeth National Park is known as a twin park to Queen Elizabeth Country Park in England. These two protected areas are twinned in a cultural exchange project and natural support; the main concern for this amalgamation in order to support conservation through empowering and working closely together with the local communities.
Queen Elizabeth National Park it has been existing about 10000 years, had no crocodiles in the Kazinga Channel waterbody. These enormous reptiles had to vacate Kazinga channel during the volcanic active period in the western rift valley that filled lake Edward with the volcanic ash from the eruption thus making water toxic for life to exist – it leads to the disappearance of the crocodiles from these water bodies.
Queen Elizabeth National Park acted as a grazing land for an indigenous African pastoralist tribe called the ‘’Basongora’’. However, they left the park due to frequent cattle raiding by Buganda and Bunyoro Kingdom. But the remaining Basongola where forced into fishing from the lakes; Lake Edward, Lake gorge and Kazinga channel thus forming the Queen Elizabeth National Park fishing villages of Busonga, Kasenyi, Katungaru many more.
The first European national to set a foot in Queen Elizabeth National Park famously known as Sir Henry Marton Stanley. He was an English explorer who visited Uganda in 1889 and by the time he visited Queen Elizabeth National Park he did not find it as human settlement but just a vast vacant land and he loved to do self-driven adventure through the plains of the park.
