Kibale National Park
Kibale National Park is about 795kmsq wide and it is one of the best Chimpanzee watching safari destinations in Africa. It is located in western part of Uganda very close to other parks like Queen Elizabeth, Rwenzori and Semliki thus making easy to combine visiting all the four in a single trip. It is largely occupied by a heavy and evergreen rainforest and it is one of the remaining parks with a diversified nature of landscapes and with the lowland and montane forest probably because it is located just slightly off the 0 degrees latitude.
Kibale was gazette in 1932 but officially became a national park in 1993. Because of its vegetation bio-diversity, the park is a home to over 120 mammals inclusive of the 13 primate species. It is therefore most popular for its primate walk adventure done in Kanyanchu during which one can search for the 13 different species of primates that live in this forest. This park is also referred to a as East Africa’s primate capital of East Africa which the chimpanzees being the most attraction of the 13 primate species. There are over 1,450 chimpanzees living in this protected area thus the reason the chances of seeing them when you go out to track them is 99 percent any day of the year. Unlike with gorilla tracking where is only one session per day, there are two normal chimpanzee tracking session with one starting at 8 am and the other starting at 2pm. Chimpanzee habituation however, where you participate in helping get the chimpanzees get used to human presence is a full day activity. Other primates found in Kibale forest park include baboons, several monkey species like the retailed colobus monkeys, black and white colobus monkeys, the most common ones are the vervet monkeys, blue monkeys, as well as the rare L’Hoests.
Kibale forest walks give you the opportunity to meet more wildlife that live in this jungle like the elephants that usually cross from Queen Elizabeth into Kibale. There are giant forest hogs, buffaloes and warthogs, bush pigs, several antelope species like bushbucks, red and blue duilkers and sometimes, sitatungas may be spotted. Lions are rare but when lucky, you can meet a few. There are also nocturnal animals like the African golden cats, mongooses, leopards and others but these are not commonly seen since there are not night walks done in this park.
Kibale being a dense rainforest, it house more than 370 bird species and out of these, 23 are Albertine endemics. Keen birders with the help of a good birding guide might easily spot over 200 species during a single nature walk in the jungle. Birds like the blue headed bee eater, Nahan’s francolins, the low land masked apalis, the grey parrots, western tinker birds, among others. Kibale is therefore not only a primate safari destination but also a birding destination.
Kibale also close to the Bigodi swamp which is also another birding destination. It is also the best place where you can find the rare sitatunga antelopes.
Anyone below 15 years of age but wishes to see some chimpanzee can only see them if they visit Chimpanzee Sanctuary on Ngamba island. This is located within Lake Victoria and there is a raised platform where all visitors including kids can watch these chimps from. You will have chimpanzee food thrown over the face and they will come out of the forest.
Kibale forest lies along a wide-range of altitudes which supports the survival of different habitats, various vegetations like the woodland, there is the Savannah in some open area, the wet dense tropical forest and at some point there is the semi- dry tropical forest. This gives the tourists a chance to an extensive exploration within the same park.
