Geography Atlas

Where Everything Happened
Sign In
Text size
100%
Theme
Protected Area

Virunga National Park

National Park

Virunga National Park is a national park in the Albertine Rift Valley in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, created in 1925 as Africa's first national park under Belgian colonial administration, originally to protect the mountain gorilla. The park spans an exceptional range of habitats from active volcanoes and glaciated peaks to savanna and lowland forest, and it is administered by the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature. It was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979 and has been listed as World Heritage in Danger since 1994 because of decades of armed conflict and poaching in the region. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Facts
Designation Category
National Park 1
Established Year
1925 1
Area (sq km)
7800 1
Governing Body
Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature 1
IUCN Category
II 1
Classification
Governance Type
Governance by Government 1
Realm
Terrestrial 1
International Designation
UNESCO World Heritage Site 1
Connections

Associated With

Source Virunga National Park (Wikipedia)
Sources
1. Virunga National Park (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation
  • lead section
    Virunga National Park is a national park in the Albertine Rift Valley in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It was created in 1925.
  • Introduction
    Virunga National Park is a national park in the Albertine Rift Valley in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, created in 1925 as Africa's first national park under Belgian colonial administration, originally to protect the mountain gorilla.
  • Governing body field (existing citation)
    Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature
  • entity-description, international-designation unesco-world-heritage-site
    It was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979 and has been listed as World Heritage in Danger since 1994 because of decades of armed conflict and poaching in the region.
View the Source
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.

View At A Past Year

Choose a year to see this entry's facts and connections as the atlas records them at that moment: what it held then, what it held instead, and what it had not yet adopted. Choose Present for the current record.