Bwindi Forest National park
Bwindi Forest National Park is located in southwestern Uganda, Kanungu district. The nearest city is Kanungu town with coordinates 01°01S29°41S. It covers a total area of 331 km2. It was established in 1991 and is governed by the Uganda Wildlife Authority, which was designated in 1994.
The park is part of the impenetrable forest and is situated along the Democratic Republic of Congo border next to the Virunga national park and on the edge of the Albertine rift Valley.
This forest is believed to be a mere remnant of a very large forest that covered much of Western Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
It is both Afromontane and lowland forest and is accessible on foot due to the thickness of the forest, as its name suggests (Bwindi Impenetrable Forest). It was designated a World Heritage Site by the United Nations Scientific and Cultural Organization.
Bwindi forest had two blocks designated as crown forest reserves in 1932, and these were; the Northern block was designated as the Kayonza crown forest reserve and Southern as Kasatora crown forest reserve. These reserves had a total area of 207 km².
These two reserves were again combined and named the Impenetrable Central Crown Forest in 1942 and this covered 298 km² and was controlled by the Ugandan Government game and forest departments.
In 1964, the Impenetrable Central Crown Forest Reserve was designated as an animal sanctuary to provide and tighten protection for its Mountain Gorillas and again given another name, Impenetrable Central Forest Reserve. Two other forest reserves became part of the reserve in 1966 with a subtotal area of 321 km². Here, the management was both a forest reserve and a game sanctuary.
The Mgahinga gorilla national park, the Rwenzori mountains national park, and the impenetrable Central Forest reserves were designated as national parks and called Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park in 1991. It was declared to protect a range of species in it and the most notable are the Mountain Gorillas and the tree species.
Gorilla tracking has become a popular tourism destination in the region since April 1993; because of this, in 1994 10 km² was added to the park and the park’s management changed to the Uganda Wildlife Authority. In 2003 another piece of land was purchased near the park by the Government of Uganda, measuring an area of 4.2 km².
