Salonga National Park

Salonga is the largest protected area of tropical rainforest in Africa, a vast and waterlogged wilderness of swamp forest and firm ground that is genuinely difficult to traverse and consequently has remained one of the least studied major ecosystems on the continent, its interior accessible only by river or on foot along old logging roads that quickly dissolve in the wet season.

Bonobos, the less aggressive cousin of the common chimpanzee, inhabit the park in communities that appear to live in something approaching a matriarchal social structure, a striking departure from the male-dominated hierarchies of most great apes that has drawn considerable scientific interest to the Lomami River basin in the southern part of the park.

The park's rivers and swamp forests support hippos, crocodiles and the unusual water cobra, while the forest canopy hosts the Congo peacock — the African continent's only native pheasant — whose raucous territorial calls are among the few sounds that break the deep silence of the interior forest.

Forest elephants persist here despite heavy poaching pressure elsewhere in the Congo basin, their numbers sustained by the park's isolation and the commitment of a small but determined ICCN ranger force that patrols on foot and by canoe across enormous distances with very limited resources.

The park's name derives from the Salonga River, a tributary of the Congo that winds through the park's heart, its banks lined with raffia palms and papyrus that provide cover for the sitatunga antelope, a fully aquatic bovine that is rarely seen but commonly detected by its tracks and vocalisations.

Night walks in the forest reveal a completely different cast of characters: the potto, the scaly-tailed flying squirrel, the African golden cat, and the forest giant pouched rat, each occupying a different nocturnal niche in a forest whose daytime visitors see only a fraction of its total biodiversity.

The near-total absence of roads into the park's interior means that visitors must travel by river to enter, typically via the Salonga River from the town ofsalonga, a journey that involves several days of paddling through increasingly remote terrain before reaching the first ranger post.

The park is bisected by the Lomami River, which provides the primary access corridor into the interior for both rangers and the small number of permitted visitors, and whose annual flood pulse creates a dynamic mosaic of forest types that supports the park's extraordinary species diversity across amphibians, reptiles, birds and small mammals that remain poorly catalogued by science.

The bonobo habituation project in the southern sector represents one of the longest-running efforts of its kind, with researchers spending years building trust with specific communities before tourism encounters became possible, and the current permittable groups represent a tiny fraction of the total bonobo population that researchers believe inhabits the park interior.

It is the largest tropical rainforest national park in Africa and one of the most isolated, offering a wilderness experience with virtually no infrastructure and correspondingly raw natural beauty.

Bonobo communities inhabit the park's southern sector; a successful habituation programme has made limited bonobo tourism possible, one of the few places in the world where encounters can be arranged.

The park protects an intact ecosystem of enormous global biodiversity significance that remains in near-pristine condition due to its extreme remoteness.