If you’ve never visited Kibale Forest National Park, it will be difficult to convince into believing my tale, though one fact is that this is the finest mountain gorilla forest habitat in the whole of Uganda. There is a loud thump of floor of the forest which makes my dear heart leap. I nervously looked up wards to the forest canopy as I slowly attempt to compose myself, but on looking at our guide, he was all smiles. “There they are” he says in low tone as he signals to us to move on. Up in the high branches of a large tree I see very dark shapes moving casually in the silhouetted branches against the clear skies.
These dark being take each step graceful and power showing no form of hesitation. I could clearly see that the giant apes were comfortable at home many meters above us. Suddenly, the forest is filled with a chorus echo of the chimpanzees. They are aware of our presence and they leave no allowance in showing us this. Inquisitively, a young one swings fluently from the higher branches and descends the truck of a very large fig to come greet and see his visitors. In one had he carried a ripe fig which he started eating and the other the swings from other tree branch and happily smiles at his close relatives.
At such a very close range, his gestures are outstandingly human, and maybe he thinks we are accidental chimpanzees. The encounter is quite magical to all those I was with and we feel so privileged having had some time deep in the jungle the haven of these impressive thousands of chimpanzees. Kibale Forest National Park’s ecosystem is considered one of the richest in Africa, and has more than 340 types of birds, 27 types of frogs & toads, 200 types of butterflies, 14 types of snakes and more than 20 types of reptiles. Other Residents include chimpanzees, bush pigs, bats, elephants, rodents and large forest hogs.
Kibale Forest National Park is a paradise for primatologists. It has a grand total of great 1,000 chimps with 80 communities habituated for tourists to visit and numerous monkey species readily available to be observed among which are the good looking L’Hoest’s monkey, acrobatic-red colobus, and the black & White colobus. For more information about the different types of primate in Uganda, Kibale National Park is somewhat a new park but a corridor or route between the large Queen Elizabeth National Park and other parks in the north of the country such as Murchison Fall National Parks.
Kibale Forest National Park is also very accessible among large forest parks in Uganda. It is a sanctuary to a wide diversity of plants and animals and has a secret trail that has been used by elephants for generations crediting the tales of the ancient wives about the “Elephant Graveyards”, and big tusked lonely bulls.The main attraction and tourist activity within the park is Chimpanzee tracking of the habituated groups. These groups are of strongly related to other than gorillas to man, and are very exciting to observe ass they play and feed in the fruity trees.
The numerous shady trails in the forest offer you a wonderful botanistic and butterfly adventure while bird watchers are treated to more than 330types of birds like the prevalent Prirogrine’s The verdant tropical rainforests and the remarkable varieties of animals in Kibale National Park have made it a very beautiful and spectacular national park in the country. Kibale forest National Park has a large population and wide diversity of primates in the whole of Africa with a total of 13 species such as the Blue & grey cheeked mangabey, pottos, red tailed monkey, black & white colobus and bush babies,