Minkébé National Park

Minkébé protects some seven and a half thousand square kilometres of forest in the northeast, one of the largest continuous blocks in Central Africa, with granite inselbergs standing several hundred metres above the canopy and rivers running through it. It held one of the region's most important forest elephant populations, which was reduced catastrophically by poaching in the 2000s and 2010s and is the subject of intensive protection now.

History

The World Wide Fund for Nature named Minkébé an area in need of protection in 1989 and began working to protect the forest in 1997, setting up forest command centres at Oyem and Makokou and a central camp at the mouth of the Nouna river. The area became a provisional reserve in 2000 and was officially established as a national park by the Gabonese government in August 2002, and it forms part of the Dja-Odzala-Minkébé Tri-National zone shared with Cameroon and the Republic of the Congo, covering 140,000 km2, about 7.5% of the forests of the Congo Basin (Wikipedia, Minkébé National Park).

Highlights

• The forest block - some seven and a half thousand square kilometres of continuous woodland.
• The inselbergs - granite domes rising hundreds of metres above the canopy.
• The rivers - the watercourses that are the only practical routes through.
• The elephant recovery - the protection effort after catastrophic poaching losses.

When to go

June to September is the long dry season and the only practical window. The rains make travel impossible. Expeditions need a week or more.

Practical notes

This is expedition territory with no roads, lodges or scheduled access. Elephant numbers were reduced by an estimated four fifths by poaching and sightings are unlikely. Permits and logistics take months to arrange.

Nearby

Makokou is south, and Oyem is west.

Key facts