This is a national park in north eastern Côte d’Ivoire and was established in 1957 as a reseve but later in February 1968 as a national park. This park is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site (1983) that celebrates the bio-diversity of plants in this region of Ivory Coast. In 2003, it was listed on the UNESCO list of Protected areas in danger.
The park covers an area of 1154945ha, one of the largest protected areas in western Africa on the banks of Comoe River and its tributaries Kongo, Bave and Iringou. It was thus named after the river which runs through the park.
Comoé National Park contains a remarkable variety of habitats, notably savannas, wooded savannas, gallery forests, fluvial forests and riparian grasslands providing an outstanding example of transitional habitats from forest to savanna.
Wildlife
There are nearly 620 species of plants, 500 species of birds, 35 amphibians and more than 130 species of birds. Of the 135 species of mammals in the park, 11 of them are species of primates and 11 are carnivores. Examples of the wild animals in the park include endangered chimpanzee species, African wild dog, elephant, dwarf crocodile, Lion, colobus monkeys, mangabey, duiker, bush pig, waterbuck, kob, roan, sitatunga, rock hyrax, aardvark, leopard, giant pangolin, baboon, green monkey, mona monkey, white nosed monkey, hippo, roan antelope and oribi among others.
There are more than 500 species of birds in the park including duck, west African stork, west African vulture, plovers, heron, hammerkop, francolin, black winged stilt and raptors among others.
The different waters of the Comoé River and its tributaries are the habitat for 60 species of fish
Location
It is in the Ivoirian Zanzan Region between the towns of Kong to the west of both the park and the Comoé River, and Bouna to the east of the park, and just west of the Black Volta that forms the border, in that area, between Côte d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso.
