Uganda Wildlife
The wildlife and bio-diversity of Uganda is some of the best that can be experienced anywhere in the world. With its well protected National Parks, huge lakes and rivers, deep gorges, mountain ranges and volcanoes, Uganda offers spectacular wildlife and game viewing in a truly breath-taking environment.
"Uganda is famed for being the world's last stronghold of the mountain gorilla"
The mountain gorilla and other primates
Uganda is home to 50% of the world's population of mountain gorilla (about 350 beasts) and because of this is easy to overlook the other primates that live in the Ugandan forests. Bwindi National Park has 10 different species of primate and Kabale National Park has 13 primate species, more than any other East African park
Birding in Uganda
Uganda also boasts some of, if not the world's greatest locations for bird watching. There is a healthy population of the national bird of Uganda, the crested crane, as well as most of the world's remaining rare shoebill stork of which only 1000 remain in the wild. Other birds include the marabou stork, bronze-tailed starling, bee-eaters and even more exotic birds such as the blue-naped coucal and the Nubian woodpecker. Bwindi National Park is home to 350 species of bird and Lake Mburo National Park is home to 357 different species. 2 weeks in Uganda often sees the traveller witnessing around 400 different bird species. Few other countries can offer such wildlife density!
Uganda's Traditional Safari Animals
Uganda is also a great location for seeing more traditional safari animals in their natural habitat. Due to heavy poaching in the 1980's large numbers of game animals were being wiped out but new conservation programmes are seeing excellent results and the wildlife is coming back in force. Large numbers of zebra roam the hills and plains. Lions and elephants can be seen while on safari in Queen Elizabeth National Park and leopard can sometimes be seen here too but this is a rarer sight. Uganda has a small population of forest elephants, a smaller and hairier version of their savannah counterpart. However they are shy creatures and not easy to come across. Uganda is home to several antelope species including the reddish-brown Ugandan Kob that appears on the country's coat of arms.