Lopé National Park (French: Parc national de la Lopé) is a national park located in central Gabon. The park is surrounded by the Ogooué River to the north and the Chaillu Massif to the south. It covers an area of 4,912 square kilometers (1,897 square miles).

History

Lopé National Park and the areas around it show signs of people living there for almost 400,000 years. The Ogooué River Valley has less forest than nearby areas, creating an open space that may have been used as a path for people and animals to move from the coast to the center of Africa. The oldest Stone Age tools found so far were discovered at Elarmékora in the middle of the valley, along with other Stone Age archaeological sites.

During the Neolithic period, which was about 3,500 to 2,000 years ago, the Bantu people may have lived in the valley during their expansion. They left behind polished stone axes and pottery. At that time, small villages were built on hills, and large trash pits were dug nearby.

Later, when iron-working began in the valley around 2,000 years ago, the hilltop villages grew larger. Iron furnaces were built close by, and farming became more common. More than 1,600 petroglyphs, or rock carvings, have been found from the time iron-working started. However, the valley was likely abandoned between 600 and 1200 AD. It was later repopulated by the Okanda people in the 1300s and 1400s.

Lopé National Park became Gabon’s first protected area when the Lopé-Okanda Wildlife Reserve was created in 1946. In 2007, the park and the surrounding Lopé-Okanda landscape were added to the UNESCO World Heritage List because of its rich biodiversity, the unique mix of savanna and forest, and the area’s petroglyphs.

Ecology

Lopé National Park has drier weather than other parts of Gabon because it is located in the rain shadow of the Chaillu Massif. There is also a region of low rainfall along the Ogooué River. These conditions create a mix of thick tropical rainforests and open grasslands. Most of the park has monsoon forest, which gets rain during certain seasons. However, the northern part of the park contains the last remaining grass savannas from Central Africa, formed 15,000 years ago during the last ice age. Over time, the boundary between rainforests and savannas has changed, with rainforests expanding into savanna areas. However, the dry climate has allowed savannas to remain in the north.

Because of its unique environment, the park has unusually high biodiversity, with many species of plants and animals. More than 1,550 plant species have been recorded so far, and many areas of the park still need to be studied.

A survey of land snails in the park found 74 species from 12 different families.

The park is also an important home for leopards, helping to maintain healthy numbers of their prey, such as red river hogs, African forest buffalo, and cane rats. Other mammals in the park include the endangered giant pangolin and tree pangolin, which often share nests with small bats.

The park is home to one of the world’s largest groups of wild primates, with more than 1,000 individuals, and the only major population of sun-tailed monkeys in a protected area. The number of forest elephants in the northern part of the park is among the highest in the world during certain seasons (1.5 per square kilometer).

Lopé National Park has been named an Important Bird Area by BirdLife International because it supports large numbers of many bird species.

Tourism and conservation

The park has a small research station called Mikongo, which is managed by the Zoological Society London. The station is located in the village named Mikongo, which is where the station gets its name. The park has facilities for visitors, such as several chalets and a large outdoor dining area. From this dining area, the rainforest is only five meters away. The park also has the CEDAMM Training Centre, an international conservation education center run by the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Because of climate change, the dense forest ecosystem is growing into the savanna ecosystem in the north. This is causing a loss of habitat variety in the park. To address this, controlled fires are conducted each year in the savanna. These fires help reduce the spread of forest plants and provide the right type of vegetation needed for the diet of the forest buffalo.