UPEMBA NATIONAL PARK – Congo Safari
Upemba National Park is a large national park in Haut-Lomami, Lualaba Province & Haut-Katanga Province (formerly in Katanga Province) of the southeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire. At the time of the creation of Upemba National Park, on 15 May 1939, the park had a surface area of 17,730 square kilometres (6,850 square mi). It was the largest park in Africa. In July 1975, the limits were revised and today the integral park has an area of 10,000 square kilometres (3,900 square mi) with an annex of a further 3,000 square kilometres (1,200 square mi).
Its lower section is located in the Upemba Depression, a lush area of lakes and marshes including the eponymous Lake Upemba, and bordered by the Lualaba River. Its higher section is in the dryer Kibara Plateau mountains.
THE GENESIS OF UPEMBA NATIONAL PARK
Upemba National Park was first established in 1939. As with much of the wildlife of the region, in contemporary times the park continues to be threatened by the activities of poachers, pollution, and the activities of refugees and militia.
There are also a handful of villages in the park. In recent years, the park has come under considerable attack from poachers and local militias. On 28 May 2004, for instance, the park headquarters in Lusinga came under attack by the Mai Mai militia. Several wardens and their families were killed, the headquarters were burned down, and the family of the chief warden was taken hostage.
On 1 June 2005, the protectors of the park received the Abraham Conservation Award for their role in protecting the rich biodiversity of the Congo River basin.
HABITATS OF THIS PARK
The habitat of the park varies from Afromontane grasslands and forests at higher altitudes in the Kibara Mountains; through Miombo woodlands and tropical rainforests; to marshes, wetlands, lakes, and streams with riparian zones at the lower altitudes. It is home to some 1,800 different species, some of them discovered as late as 2003.
Lake Upemba has a maximum depth reported to be only 3.2 metres (10 feet) and it is a site of intense algae growth. The watercourses of the region fluctuate according to the season and the water level in the lakes is high from March to June, and low from October to January. Many of the bodies of the water in the area are characterized by extensive swamps, with papyrus, Nile lettuce and water caltrop among other species.
Fauna.
The system of lakes, rivers, swamps and wetlands supports a variety of fish fauna. This includes over 30 species of Cyprinidae, Mormyridae (also known as freshwater elephant fish), Barbus, Alestidae, Mochokidae and Cichlidae.
Bird species include several threatened or endangered species, such as the shoebill, wattled crane and spotted ground-thrush.
THE PATHOLOGY OF EXTICTION
Rates of natural and present-day species extinction
According to the best estimates of the world’s environmental experts, human activities have driven species to extinction at rates perhaps 1,000 times the natural, or background, rate, and future rates of extinction will likely be higher. To show how the experts arrived at these conclusions, it is necessary to pose and attempt to answer a series of extremely difficult questions. How many species are there? How fast were species disappearing before human activity became pervasive? How fast are they becoming extinct at present? And finally, it is necessary to ask a further question: What does the future hold for extinctions if current trends continue?
Any absolute estimate of extinction rate, such as extinctions per year, requires knowledge of how many species there are. Unfortunately, this number is not known with any great degree of certainty, and the problems of estimating it are formidable. Taxonomists have described—that is, have given names to—about 1.9 million species. Only about 100,000 of them, comprising terrestrial vertebrates, some flowering plants, and attractive and collectible invertebrates such as butterflies and snails, are popular enough for taxonomists to know well. Birds are exceptionally well known; there are roughly 10,400 bird species, with only 1 or 2 new species being added each year.
Those who describe species cannot always be certain that the specimen in hand has not been given a name by someone else in a different country and sometimes even in a different century. Consequently, some taxonomic groups may have more names assigned to them than constituent species, which would result in erroneously high species estimates. Potentially much more serious as a source of error is the fact that some species groups have relatively few named members compared with the numbers that experts think exist in those groups. For example, taxonomists have only sparsely sampled some potentially rich communities, such as the bottom of the deep ocean and the canopies of rainforests.
One estimate of how many species might still be undescribed involves a comparison of fungi and flowering plants (angiosperms). In Great Britain, where both groups are well known, there are six times as many named species of fungi as of flowering plants. If this ratio applies worldwide, the world total of about 300,000 species of flowering plants, which are fairly well known globally, predicts a total of about 1.8 million species of fungi, which are not. Other mycologists estimate that there may be between 2.2 million and 3.8 million total species. Only about 144,000 species of fungi currently have names
For insects, there are about 1 million described species, yet estimates of how many insect species exist are often around 5.5 million.
An obvious concern follows regarding the usefulness of such calculations as a basis for assessing the loss of species. Any absolute estimate of species extinctions must be extrapolated from the 100,000 well-known species of living plants and animals, to the roughly 1.5 million described species, to the likely grand total of very roughly 8.7 million. However, if the potential number of bacteria species are included, some estimates reach as high as 1 trillion species. Because of uncertainties about the total number of living species, published statements regarding the total number of species that become extinct per year or per day can vary a hundredfold.
Another approach to assessing species loss is to derive relative estimates—estimates of the proportion of well-known species that become extinct in a given interval. Estimating such proportions is the basis for the remainder of the discussion on rates of extinction, but it raises a critical concern of its own—namely, are these proportions actually typical of the great majority of species that are still undescribed? They are likely to be so if extinction rates in widely different species groups and regions turn out to be broadly similar.
ACTIVITIES AT UPEMBA NATIONAL PARK.
Wildlife watching
Upemba National Park id a home to various animals such as the antelopes, elephants, buffalos, lions, zebras, baboons and many others and there exist various trekking routes and tracks that will make your safari a great wilderness adventure. The Katanga Impala is also endemic to this area, it’s also the only park in Congo to see zebras and cheetahs.
Bird watching.
This national park is gifted with a numerous bird species some of which include, sparrow Weaver’s bee eater, paradise, fire finch, chestnut owlet, dickinson’s Kestrel, crane, racket tailed roller, the rare shoebill, Angola Lark, Citiscola, Miombo Rock thrush, flycatchers, Nicator Honey guide greenbul, souza shrike, spotted ground thrush and barbet.
Fishing.
There are ten fishing lakes within the park of which are controlled by the park fishermen are usually charged annually as the fishing fee and here the main months are the from the month of March to the month of November, tourists can also engage in this activity and restricted to specific fishing methods.
Cultural tours.
there are several villages around the park that visitors can go and learn about people’s ways of living and many about their culture and here, many more things that can be engaged in, visitors can also acquire handy crafts locally made to take back to show to their loved ones.
When to visit this national park.
The best time to visit this amazing national park is between the month of January in the dry season when the grass is a bit shorter and dry and not thick making it visible and easy to the desired animals and all the park is filled with animals.
How to get there.
The tourists are free to use the way from Lubumbashi one of the Katanga’s capital which is about 400kilometers from the park, the park also boarders Angola and Zambia. Tourists can get here by air through Lubumbashi airport. The park can also be accessed through like Tanganyika in Tanzania
There is a variety of places where to stay depending on tourist’s choice and budget, some of the accommodation sectors are in luxurious lodges, campsites, bandas, and many more with well vanished rooms to make you comfortable.
