Semuliki national park

The 220km2 Semuliki National Park and the nearby 545km2 Toro-Semliki Wildlife Reserve lie on the floor of the Semliki Valley, the 160km-long part of the Albertine Rift Valley, The Semuliki forest boasts a remarkably rich biodiversity. This is partly because it is extremely old, being one a few patches of forest refugia that predate the arid millennia of the last Ice Age.

The park contains 53 mammal species, including an impressive 11 primates. Dent’s mona monkey, the Central African red colobus, forest buffalo and the water chevrotain, occur nowhere else in East Africa, the park contains evidence of even older processes: hot springs bubble up from the depths to demonstrate the powerful subterranean forces that have been shaping the rift valley during the last 14 million years.