Lomami National Park

Lomami was gazetted in 2016, the first new national park in the country for decades, covering around nine thousand square kilometres of forest and river between the Lomami and Tshuapa. It came out of a survey that in 2012 described the lesula, a monkey new to science with a strikingly human-looking face, found only in this forest block. Bonobo, okapi, forest elephant and the Congo peacock all occur here, and the park was created with the surrounding communities rather than over their objections.

History

The park was created through meetings in village centres and town halls and outreach led by ministers, chiefs and deputies, and from 2010 through 2012 the surrounding villages defined its limits themselves, legitimised in Tambiko ceremonies in which the ancestors were consulted. By 2013 the governors of Maniema and Tshopo had declared provincial parks, making all hunting within them illegal, and on 7 July 2016 the national government decreed Lomami National Park, the ninth in the country and the first since 1992, covering some 8,879 km² of lowland rainforest, home to the bonobo, the okapi, the Congo peafowl and the lesula monkey (Wikipedia, Lomami National Park).

Highlights

• The lesula - a monkey described only in 2012, found in this forest and nowhere else.
• The Lomami river - the black-water river the park is built around.
• The bonobo - present on the left bank, in the species' core range.
• The forest - continuous lowland rainforest with very low human population density.

When to go

The drier windows, December to February and June to August, are the practical seasons. Movement is largely by river and on foot. Any visit is planned months ahead with the park authority.

Practical notes

There is essentially no tourism infrastructure: this is a working conservation project rather than a destination. Reaching it takes days from Kisangani by river and road. Wildlife is unhabituated and sightings require patience and luck.

Nearby

Kisangani is north on the Congo river, and the Maiko park lies east.

Key facts