Lopé-Okanda

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Lopé-Okanda ecosystem and relic cultural landscape
UNESCO world heritage UNESCO World Heritage Emblem
Lopé National Park river crop.jpg
Landscape in the Lopé National Park
National territory: GabonGabon Gabon
Type: Mixed
Criteria : iii, iv, ix, x
Surface: 511,991 ha
Reference No .: 1147 rev
UNESCO region : Africa
History of enrollment
Enrollment: 2007  (session 31)

The Lopé Okanda Conservation Area is one of 13 national parks in Gabon and is of both ecological and cultural importance. For this reason it was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2007. It is the only world heritage site in Gabon.

Location and geography

The Lopé-Okanda National Park is located approx. 300 km southeast of Gabon's capital Libreville and covers an area of ​​491,291 ha. The world heritage site is somewhat broader with 511,991 ha: Doda (1700 ha), Elarmékora (10200 ha), Mokékou (4800 ha) and Mont Iboundji (4000 ha). The area extends over the provinces of Ogooué-Ivindo and Ogooué-Lolo and is enclosed by the river Ogooué in the north and two of its tributaries, Offoué and Mingoué, in the east and west and by the Chaillu massif in the south.

history

The Ogooué Valley has a very long and varied history. The course of the river represented a corridor from the coast to the inland even in prehistoric times. As the only way around the inhospitable rainforest, the area was used by people very early on. Their appearance today seems to be the result of long, uninterrupted human settlement. The rainforest was destroyed by bush fires and a savanna-like landscape emerged, an ideal settlement area. As early as the Paleolithic, people used this natural advantage and settled the area. The population density increased steadily over the course of the Stone Age until it was replaced by a series of waves of migration in the Neolithic and Iron Ages. The most important of these marks the Bantu migration. They used the valley of the Ogooué to cross the equatorial rainforest. Between around 800 and 1200 AD, the area was probably deserted for reasons that are still unknown. Since then, however, various language groups have resettled. In 1967 the Route Nationale 3 was built through the valley. Since 1976 a railway line has been running in the valley, the population of which is estimated at around 2000 people today.

World natural heritage

Due to its diverse vegetation and fauna, the area was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2007.

flora

The coexistence of savannah and rainforest in a small area is an extraordinary phenomenon, which makes the area a particularly valuable natural area. The long settlement of the area led to the development of this special landscape, which is still in constant change today. While in other, comparable areas, the rainforest gradually covered the area again, this was not possible in Lopé-Okanda due to the relatively dry climate. The result was an incomparable natural landscape, a combination of rainforest and savannah, in which a rich flora developed that also accommodates plants that could not be found anywhere else in Gabon.

fauna

Elephants in the park

The largest animal in the area is the African forest elephant . In total, there are 45 large to medium-sized mammal species in Lopé National Park. Among them there are typical forest animals or generalists, but hardly any species that are exclusively adapted to the savannah. The area is home to eleven species of predator , twelve species of ungulates , 14 species of primate and several species of pangolin . The largest predator is the leopard , the only other cat in the area is the African golden cat . There are also various smaller predators, such as pardle rollers and African civets . Before Among the ungulates, the duiker in particular are represented in great variety. The largest of these is the yellow bridge duiker . Also you will find blue duiker , White-bellied Duiker , Peter Drucker , bay duiker and Ogilby-Ducker . Other ungulates include red buffalo , bushbuck , sitatunga , brush-eared pig and deer pig . Among the primates, in addition to the two great apes, the Central African chimpanzee and the western lowland gorilla , the mandrill , which occurs exclusively in the forests of western central Africa , is particularly striking . The monkeys are further characterized by medium-sized species such as Grauwangenmangaben , Black Colobus , Great White lugs , crown monkeys and blue monkeys mouth represented.

World Heritage

The long and diverse settlement history of the Ogooué Valley is extraordinarily well documented by archaeological finds. Since the excavations began in 1987, numerous evidence of early settlement have been found over the entire area of ​​Lopé-Okanda, including some unique, such as the oldest African tools from the Stone Age and more than 1,800 rock carvings. These finds belong to the few documentations of the colonization of the equatorial rainforest in the Stone Age and offer a lot of new information about life at that time. In addition, thanks to the almost uninterrupted settlement, they document the technical developments of the Iron Age very continuously and provide information about the migration routes of the Bantu to Central and South Africa. This documentation of 400,000 years of human settlement from the Stone Age to today is a special feature and the reason why the area was added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 2007.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ ICOMOS Advisory Body Evaluation (PDF; 5.6 MB) p. 11
  2. ↑ ICOMOS Advisory Body Evaluation (PDF; 5.6 MB) p. 14
  3. ↑ ICOMOS Advisory Body Evaluation (PDF; 5.6 MB) p. 14
  4. ↑ UNESCO World Heritage Center: Ecosystem and Relict Cultural Landscape of Lopé-Okanda. Retrieved August 20, 2017 .
  5. ↑ IUCN Technical Evaluation (PDF; 5.6 MB) p. 2
  6. ↑ Lee JT White: Sacoglottis gabonensis fruiting and the seasonal movements of elephants in the Lopé Reserve, Gabon . Journal of Tropical Ecology. Journal of Tropical Ecology (1994) 10: 121-125. doi : 10.1017 / S0266467400007768 .
  7. ^ P. Henschel, KA Abernethy, LJT White: Leopard food habits in the Lopé National Park, Gabon, Central Africa . African Journal of Ecology. Volume 43, Issue 1, pages 21-28, March 2005. doi : 10.1111 / j.1365-2028.2004.00518.x .
  8. ↑ ICOMOS Advisory Body Evaluation (PDF; 5.6 MB) p. 14
  9. ↑ ICOMOS Advisory Body Evaluation (PDF; 5.6 MB) p. 12

Web links

Coordinates: 0 ° 28 ′ 20.6 ″  S , 11 ° 32 ′ 38 ″  E