Crystal Mountains National Park (french: Parc National des Monts de Cristal) is a twin park and one of the 13

national parks A national park is a natural park in use for conservation purposes, created and protected by national governments. Often it is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or owns. Although individual ...

Gabon Gabon (; ; snq, Ngabu), officially the Gabonese Republic (french: République gabonaise), is a country on the west coast of Central Africa. Located on the equator, it is bordered by Equatorial Guinea to the northwest, Cameroon to the north ...

. It is situated in the Monts de Crystal on the western edge of the Woleu-Ntem Plateau, between

Equatorial Guinea Equatorial Guinea ( es, Guinea Ecuatorial; french: Guinée équatoriale; pt, Guiné Equatorial), officially the Republic of Equatorial Guinea ( es, link=no, República de Guinea Ecuatorial, french: link=no, République de Guinée équatoria ...

and the

Ogooué River The Ogooué (or Ogowe), also known as the Nazareth river, some long, is the principal river of Gabon in west central Africa and the fifth largest river in Africa by volume of discharge, trailing only the Congo, Kasai, Niger and Zambezi. Its w ...

. The twin parks, Mbe National Park and Mt Sene National Park, were established on 4 September 2002, based on their exceptionally high

plant Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae exclud ...

biodiversity Biodiversity or biological diversity is the variety and variability of life on Earth. Biodiversity is a measure of variation at the genetic (''genetic variability''), species (''species diversity''), and ecosystem (''ecosystem diversity'') l ...

and forming part of a former

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fina ...

rain forest Rainforests are characterized by a closed and continuous tree canopy, moisture-dependent vegetation, the presence of epiphytes and lianas and the absence of wildfire. Rainforest can be classified as tropical rainforest or temperate rainforest ...

refugium. The park is home to many animal species such as elephants or monkeys, and hundreds of species of butterflies can be found here, some of which are very rare, such as euphaedra brevis, cymothoe or graphium angrier.

External links

Wildlife Conservation SocietyVirtual Tour of the National Parks

References

National parks of Gabon Protected areas established in 2002 2002 establishments in Gabon {{Africa-protected-area-stub