Nechisar National Park
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| Location: | Region of the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples , Ethiopia | ||
| Next city: | Arba Minch | ||
| Surface: | 514 km² | ||
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The Nechisar National Park (also written Nech Sar , Amharic ነጭ ሣር nätsch sar "white grass") is one of nine national parks in Ethiopia .
It is located in the region of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples , immediately east of the city of Arba Minch . Its area of 514 km² includes the Bridge of God , an isthmus between Lake Abaya and Lake Chamo , and the Nechisar plain east of the two lakes.
Indigenous animal species include red hartebeest , plains zebra , Grant's gazelle , dikdiks , and great kudu . One area of the north-west bank of the Chamo is known as the so-called crocodile market, a place where hundreds of crocodiles gather to sunbathe.
The Koorete - also called Kore or Amaro - who live in the Amaro Mountains east of the park, do some farming in the park area, but have not settled there. Guji-Oromo live as ranchers with numerous cattle in the park.
The establishment of the national park was proposed in 1967, and the park was officially established in 1974. It has never been legally designated, but functions as a de facto national park. In 1982, the Guji were forcibly evicted from Nechisar National Park as their presence was seen as a threat to the park. Their anger over this eviction led to a persistently negative attitude towards the park. After the fall of the Derg government in 1991, the Guji returned to the area. From the mid-1990s, the authorities, with the support of the EU, planned to resettle the Guji and Koorete from the national park in order to protect it and use it for tourism. In 2004 the Dutch Africa Parks Foundation took over the management of Nechisar, in the same year park rangers and the police burned down hundreds of temporary houses of the Guji. In 2008 Africa Parks withdrew from Nechisar National Park because of local difficulties and controversy surrounding the relocation of the Guji.
Web links
- World Database on Protected Areas - Nechisar National Park (English)
- Abiyot Negera Biressu: Resettlement and Local Livelihoods in Nechsar National Park, Southern Ethiopia , Thesis Submitted for the Degree: Master of Philosophy in Indigenous Studies Faculty of Social Science, University of Tromsø Norway, 2009 (PDF; 12.0 MB)