Korup National Park
Africa's oldest rainforest, protected since 1986 and laced with a canopy walkway and swing bridges.
History
Korup protects over 1,260 km² of lowland rainforest believed to be among the oldest in Africa, having survived relatively undisturbed through past ice ages while forests elsewhere retreated — which helps explain its extraordinary plant diversity, with well over 600 tree species recorded. It was gazetted as a national park in 1986 after a long international conservation campaign led with the Cameroonian government, and its Mana Bridges, a set of swaying suspension footbridges over the Mana River, are now one of its best-known features for visitors heading into the forest interior. The park is home to drills, red colobus monkeys and forest elephants, among more than 400 recorded bird species.
Beyond the facts
Culture & traditions
A living tradition or belief tied to the place, distinct from its recorded history.
Oroko and neighbouring communities around Korup have long maintained sacred groves and taboo species — plants and animals that customary law forbids hunting or cutting — a form of informal conservation that predates the park's official protection by generations and that researchers now credit with helping preserve some of its rarest plants. Traditional herbalists from villages bordering the park still hold detailed knowledge of forest medicinal plants, some of which has fed directly into pharmaceutical research conducted in and around Korup since the 1990s.