Ivindo National Park

Ivindo National Park is a national park in east-central Gabon in Central Africa, straddling the border of the Ogooué-Ivindo and Ogooué-Lolo provinces. Its creation was announced in August 2002 by then-President Omar Bongo at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg, along with Gabon’s 12 other terrestrial national parks. Most famous for the spectacular Kongou and Mingouli waterfalls of the Ivindo River, known as the “wonders of Ivindo”,^[2] the park also includes the Ipassa Makokou Biosphere Reserve and Langoué Baï, one of the 5 most important forest clearings in Central Africa.^[3] The park was designated as a UNESCO UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2021 for its outstanding biodiversity and relatively intact tropical forest ecosystem

Physical features of the park include the Ivindo River, the park is the main tributary to the Ogooué, and Mount Kingué (749 m)^[5] and Mount Ngouadi (870 m). Average rainfall is 1672 mm, with peaks in rainfall between September and December, and February and May.^[2] Violent thunderstorms occur seasonally, and can sometimes generate localised tornadoes, especially on the Ipassa Plateau; the disturbances caused by this effect may be responsible for the fact that this forest superficially resembles secondary forest.^[2] Average temperature is 23.9 °C (measured at Makokou a few kilometres from the northern park border), with seasonal variation of around 3.3 °C