Mount Elgon National ParkUganda
Mount Elgon National Park Uganda is a national park in Kenya and Uganda that lies 140 kilometers northeast of Lake Victoria. The park covers an area of 1,279 kilometers. The Ugandan part of the park covers 1,110 km while the Kenyan part covers 169 km. The Kenyan part of the park was founded in 1968, and the Ugandan part in 1992. Mount Elgon National Park Uganda is uniquely broken down in the middle by the Kenyan-Ugandan border. Mount Elgon is an important water supply for the Nzoia River, which streams to Lake Victoria, and for the Turkwel River (known as the Suam River in Uganda), which pours into Lake Turkana.
Mount Elgon’s slopes have a wealthy variety of vegetation ranging from montane forest to high open moorland studded with giant lobelia, groundsel, and heather plants. The vegetation changes with height. The mountain slopes are covered with Elgon olive and Aningeria adolfi-friederici wet montane forest. This changes to an olive and Afrocarpus gracilior forest at higher heights, and then an Afrocarpus and bamboo Yushania alpine zone. Higher even is a Hagenia abyssinica zone and then moorland with heaths Erica arborea and Erica trimera, tussock grasses such as Agrostis gracilifolia and Festuca pilgeri, herbs such as Alchemilla, Helichrysum, Lobelia, and the giant groundsels Senecio barbatipes and Senecio elgonensis.
The botanical variety of the Mount Elgon National Park Uganda includes giant Afrocarpus, Elgon olive, African juniper, pillarwood, elderberry, pure stands of Afrocarpus gracilior, and different orchids. Of the 400 species registered for the area, the following are of special note as they just happen in high elevation broadleaf montane forest, Ardisiandra wettsteinii, Carduus afromontanus, Echinops hoehnelii, Ranunculus keniensis, and Romulea keniensis.
The park is even home to various small antelope and duiker, as well as forest monkeys, including the black-and-white colobus and blue monkey. Red-tailed monkeys have been recorded after being thought to be locally vanished. Both leopards and hyenas live there. Mount Elgon is home to at least 144 bird species. Due to their limited range, Jackson’s spurfowl, the eastern bronze-naped pigeon, Hartlaub’s turaco, the Tacazze sunbird, and the endangered lammergeier are of special attraction.
Together with the fauna and flora, the park has a mixture of scenery, which contains cliffs, caves, waterfalls, gorges, mesas, calderas, hot springs, and mountain peaks. The most popular places are the four explorable, broad caves where regular night visitors such as elephants and buffaloes come to lick the natural salt found on the cave walls. Kitum cave, with overhanging crystalline walls, into the side of Mt. Elgon. At the Endebess Bluff there is a scenic sight of the area’s cliffs, gorges, mesas, and rivers. The highest peak of Mt. Elgon on the Kenya side, Koitoboss, measures 4,155 m and is smoothly reached by hikers in about two hours from the road’s end.
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