Kidepo valley national park

Park at a glance:

Size: 1,442km2.

Altitude: 914m - 2750m above sea level.

The park features two seasonal rivers, Kidepo and Narus, which dry up during the dry season, leaving only pools for the wildlife. The local communities around the park include pastoral Karamojong people, similar to the Maasai of Kenya, and the IK, a hunter-gatherer tribe whose survival is threatened.

Kidepo Valley National Park lies in the rugged, semi-arid valleys between Uganda's borders with Sudan and Kenya, approximately 700 kilometers from Kampala.

Gazetted as a national park in 1962, it boasts a profusion of big game and hosts over 80 mammal species, as well as approximately 476 bird species. Kidepo is Uganda's most isolated national park. Still, the few who make the long journey north through the wild frontier region of Karamoja would agree that it is also the most magnificent, for Kidepo ranks among Africa's finest wildernesses.

From Apoka, in the heart of the park, a savannah landscape extends far beyond the Gazetted area, towards horizons outlined by distant mountain ranges. During the dry season, the only permanent water in the park is found in wetlands and remnant pools in the broad Narus Valley near Apoka. These seasonal oases, combined with the open savannah terrain, make the Narus Valley the park's prime game-viewing location.

Wildlife Data in Kidepo Valley National Park

Due to conservation efforts by the Uganda Wildlife Authority and neighboring communities, Kidepo's elephant population has increased to between 650 and 1000 today, up from around 200 in the mid-1990s. The African Buffalo population is now estimated to be between 10,000 and 15,000.

The Rothschild Giraffe is very common, with more than 50 individuals having been born since the bottleneck of the mid-1990s, when only three recorded individuals existed, supplemented by translocation to other areas of the country.

There is a whopping 476 bird species population, the most notable ones are the Ostrich, secretary bird, northern carmine bee eater, little green bee eater, Abyssinian scimitar bill, and the isabelline wheatear