LOMAMI NATIONAL PARK

The Lomami National Park covers an area of 887,000 hectares. It straddles the provinces of Tshopo and Maniema with a slight overlap in the forests of the Tshuapa and Lualaba river basins. The national park was officially opened on July 19, 2016. It is the ^9th national park in the country and the first to be established since 1992. And it includes the Lomami-Lualaba Wildlife Reserve. In Maniema, it occupies part of the Kailo territory, in the Balanga and Bangengele sector. In addition, they are invited to become involved in the initiative, as in the case of the integrated conservation models and community projects developed by ICCN in its other natural parks. The project - initiated by John and Terese Hart, a couple of American biologists who have been in the Congo for more than 40 years - that led to the creation of the park and is still ongoing today, is called TL2, named after the three rivers that form the borders of the park: Tshuapa, Lomami and Lualaba. The initial goal of TL2 was to determine how many bonobos still live in the pristine forests in the heart of Congo bounded by these three rivers, as well as to survey other large animals, and to identify threats to these species in order to protect them. It appeared that in addition to bonobos, okapi, Congolese peacocks and forest elephants have also found refuge there, and there is even talk of a new species of monkey..