Travel: Okomu National Park Presents The Beauty Of The Wild

If geography and the wild is your thing, you should find time to visit The Okomu National Park. It was formerly known as the Okomu Wildlife Sanctuary – a forest block within the 1,082 km² Okomu Forest Reserve in the Ovia South-West Local Government Area of Edo State in Nigeria. The park is about 60 km north west of Benin City.The park holds a small fragment of the rich forest that once covered the region, and is the last habitat for many endangered species.

The park holds a remnant of the Nigerian lowland forests that once formed a continuous 50–100 km wide belt from the Niger River west to the Dahomey Gap in Benin. The park has diverse fauna, with 33 species of mammals including the African buffalo and the endangered African forest elephant. There is a population of the vulnerable white-throated guenon, a primate. Although no thorough study of the primate population has been done since 1982, chimpanzees were reported to be present in the region in 2009. About 150 species of birds have been identified.

These include Angolan pitta, grey parrot, wrinkled hornbill, fish eagle, hawks, woodpeckers, great owl, grey hornbill, cattle egret, black-casqued hornbill, yellow-casqued hornbill, Sabine’s spinetail, Cassin’s spinetail, black spinetail, white-breasted negrofinch, chestnut-breasted negrofinch, pale-fronted negrofinch and yellow-throated cuckoo. Perhaps of greater interest to most visitors, the park has over 700 species of colourful butterflies.
Photo Credit: Getty

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