Murchison Falls National Park in Uganda

Murchison Falls

Murchison Falls National Park, lies at the northern end of the great Albertine Rift Valley, where the bulky Bunyoro escapement emerges into a vast plains of the Acholiland. It covers 3,893 km2 and is now the Uganda’s largest protected area. One of the oldest Uganda’s conservation area that was gazetted as a game reserve in 1926 to protect a savannah ecosystem that Winston Churchill described in 1909 as the “Kew Gardens and the Zoo combines on an unlimited scale”. Murchison National Park is bisected by the Victoria Nile which first races down 80km of white water rapids before plunging 40m over the remnant rift valley wall at Murchison Falls, the centerpiece of the park. This waterfall was named in 1864 by the explorer Samuel Baker who considered it “the most important object through the entire course of the Victoria Nile” the falls then drains and transforms into a broad, placid stream that flows quietly t across the rift valley for 55km to L. Albert. This river stretch provides one of Uganda’s spectacular wildlife haven, among which, are elephants, giraffes, buffalos, as well as the hippopotamuses and Nile crocodiles are ever there. With its savannah, woodland, river/wetland and tropical ecosystems, it provides home for 76 mammal species and 450 bird species. Large mammals include lions, leopards, elephants, hippos, Rothschild’s giraffes, cape buffalos, oribis, and Uganda kob, among others. Its also hosts a great number of 360 bird species including the rare shoebill stork and the largest concentration of crocodiles in Uganda.