Deux Balés National Park is a national park located in central eastern

Burkina Faso Burkina Faso (, ; , ff, 𞤄𞤵𞤪𞤳𞤭𞤲𞤢 𞤊𞤢𞤧𞤮, italic=no) is a landlocked country in West Africa with an area of , bordered by Mali to the northwest, Niger to the northeast, Benin to the southeast, Togo and Ghana to ...

. It is within

Mouhoun Province Mouhoun is one of the 45 provinces of Burkina Faso. It is in the Boucle du Mouhoun region. The capital of Mouhoun is Dédougou. Education In 2011 the province had 210 primary schools and 34 secondary schools. Healthcare In 2011 the province had ...

just west of the Black Volta River and at an elevation of 235-310m.UNEP-WCMC
Retrieved June 17, 2008.

History

Deux Balés National Park was first established in 1937 as the ''forêts classées des Deux Balés'' ('the Deux Balés Classified Forests') with an area of 610 square kilometres. At that time, it was part of French West Africa. In 1967, while part of the newly independent

Republic of Upper Volta The Republic of Upper Volta (french: République de Haute-Volta) was a landlocked West African country established on 11 December 1958 as a self-governing colony within the French Community. Before becoming autonomous, it had been part of the ...

, the area was given the name of a National Park and referred to as 'parc national des Deux Balés'. However, there is still no law establishing it as a national park.

Poaching Poaching has been defined as the illegal hunting or capturing of wild animals, usually associated with land use rights. Poaching was once performed by impoverished peasants for subsistence purposes and to supplement meager diets. It was set a ...

occurs in the park, and in 1968 there was a considerable reduction of large mammal populations by the 'Service de l'Elevage'. In 1989, the

International Union for Conservation of Nature The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN; officially International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of nat ...

recommended that "The legal status of Deux Balés National Park should be reviewed, in light of agricultural and mining activities which conflict with the integrity of its elephant populations". By 2001, Burkina Faso was sheltering the largest number of

elephant Elephants are the largest existing land animals. Three living species are currently recognised: the African bush elephant, the African forest elephant, and the Asian elephant. They are the only surviving members of the family Elephantidae ...

s in West Africa, and Deux Balés (together with Baporo Forest) was home to roughly four hundred of them.

Physical features

The National Park is part of an undulating

granitic A granitoid is a generic term for a diverse category of coarse-grained igneous rocks that consist predominantly of quartz, plagioclase, and alkali feldspar. Granitoids range from plagioclase-rich tonalites to alkali-rich syenites and from quartz- ...

plain In geography, a plain is a flat expanse of land that generally does not change much in elevation, and is primarily treeless. Plains occur as lowlands along valleys or at the base of mountains, as coastal plains, and as plateaus or uplands ...

, with

outcrop An outcrop or rocky outcrop is a visible exposure of bedrock or ancient superficial deposits on the surface of the Earth. Features Outcrops do not cover the majority of the Earth's land surface because in most places the bedrock or superficia ...

s of rock and lateritic

plateau In geology and physical geography, a plateau (; ; ), also called a high plain or a tableland, is an area of a highland consisting of flat terrain that is raised sharply above the surrounding area on at least one side. Often one or more sides ...

x. It lies at an

altitude Altitude or height (also sometimes known as depth) is a distance measurement, usually in the vertical or "up" direction, between a reference datum and a point or object. The exact definition and reference datum varies according to the context ...

of 235 to 310 metres.

Flora and fauna

The Park has been called "an area of about of

bushland In Australia, bushland is a blanket term for land which supports remnant vegetation or land which is disturbed but still retains a predominance of the original floristics and structure. Human survival in bushland has a whole mythology evolving ...

and aging

baobab ''Adansonia'' is a genus made up of eight species of medium-to-large deciduous trees known as baobabs ( or ). They are placed in the Malvaceae family, subfamily Bombacoideae. They are native to Madagascar, mainland Africa, and Australia.Trop ...

trees". The vegetation comprises Sudano-Zambezian

savanna A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland- grassland (i.e. grassy woodland) ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach the ground to ...

with a carpet of grasses, and trees such as

Anogeissus leiocarpus ''Anogeissus leiocarpa'' (African birch; bm, ngálǎma) is a tall deciduous tree native to the savannas of tropical Africa. It is the sole West African species of the genus ''Anogeissus'', a genus otherwise distributed from tropical central a ...

Isoberlinia doka ''Isoberlinia doka'' is a hardwood tree native to African tropical savannas and Guinean forest-savanna mosaic dry forests where it can form single species stands. The tree is exploited for its economic value as a commercial timber. The leaves ...

and Terminalia laxiflora. There is gallery forest on the riverbanks. Mammals include

hippopotamus The hippopotamus ( ; : hippopotamuses or hippopotami; ''Hippopotamus amphibius''), also called the hippo, common hippopotamus, or river hippopotamus, is a large semiaquatic mammal native to sub-Saharan Africa. It is one of only two extan ...

Hippopotamus amphibius, buffalo Syncerus caffer,

Loxodonta africana, antelopes and for the reptiles the crocodile Crocodylus sp., although the diversity of fauna has been reported as being reduced. In ''Antelopes: Global Survey And Regional Action Plans'' (1990), Rod East stated the view that the long-term survival of Burkina Faso's antelope populations would depend on developing rational wildlife utilization schemes in areas such as Deux Balés, recognizing the importance of bushmeat, and that giving legal protection to the antelope there would achieve little without other improvements in management. The forests lying along some one hundred kilometres of the banks of the Black Volta River are protected within the Deux Balés.Thieme, Michele L., & Robin Abell, ''Freshwater Ecoregions of Africa and Madagascar: A Conservation Assessment'' (Island Press, 2005) p. 328.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Deux Bales National Park National parks of Burkina Faso Protected areas established in 1937