Area: 1,978 km2 (764 sq mi)
Established: 1952
Location: Uganda
How to get there: Roads: Queen Elizabeth National Park can be reached by air from both Entebbe International Airport, the country’s international airport and you’re most likely starting point, and the Kajjansi Airfield near Kampala. The nearby airports to Queens are Kasese, Mweya and Ishasha.
Uganda’s domestic flight network offers a wide range of scheduled direct flights, and aircraft which are chartered. The flight time is generally an hour or two.
What to do there: GAME DRIVES. The major highlight of a visit to the park are the scenic game drives that give you a chance to view even the most elusive of the park’s fauna, bird watching, boat trip/launch cruise, the tree climbing lions of ishasha.
Queen Elizabeth NP is located at southwestern Uganda. It occupies an area of 764 square miles (1,978 square km) in a region of rolling plains east of Lake Edward and foothills south of the Ruwenzori Mountains. The park is located within the Western Rift Valley, and its landscape is dotted with volcanic craters of the Pleistocene Epoch.
The park was established in 1952, one of the largest in Uganda and adjoins the frontier of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west. Its vegetation which consists mostly of thickest types of small trees, including acacias and evergreens. There are also areas of rainforest and of savanna grassland. The park’s wildlife includes chimpanzees, leopards, lions, elephants, hippopotamuses, water buffaloes, and several types of antelopes, such as duiker, reedbuck, and topi. The park is extremely rich in avian fauna, prominent among which are many species of kingfishers.
Overall, the park is home to 95 mammal species and over 600 bird species. The area around Ishasha in Rukungiri District is famous for its tree-climbing lions, whose males often sport black manes. In 2020, Uganda’s Wildlife Authority executive director Samuel John Mwandha stated about the wildlife that the wildlife in park has been increasing in the last five years.
QENP, together with the adjacent of Virunga National Park, was designated as a ‘lion conservation unit’ by the IUCN in 2006. The area is also considered as a potential lion stronghold in Central Africa, if stealing is restricted and prey species are allowed to recover. The inhabitant lion population (including hyenas and leopards) are actively monitored by the Uganda Carnivore Program and the Uganda Wildlife Authority through the use of radio collars and other conservation initiatives.
The park is absolutely famous for its volcanic features too, including volcanic cones and deep craters, many with crater lakes, such as the Katwe craters, from which salt is also extracted.
