The Karoo National Park, founded in 1979, is a wildlife reserve in the isolated Karoo area of the Western Cape, South Africa near Beaufort West. The area is mostly semi-desert and is well known for its isolation. The national park, which covers an area of 767.9 square kilometres (296.5 sq mi), is home of many desert mammals, along with the Verreaux's Eagle and various species of tortoise, for the park lays claim to having the most of these species of any national park. Endangered species such as the Black Rhinoceros and Riverine Rabbit have been successfully resettled here.
Many fossils have been uncovered at both the national park and its surrounding area, of which some are estimated at almost three-hundred million years old. Most fossils date from the Mesozoic Era in the history of Earth. During this period, the area was covered by sea, depositing its sediment atop the dead creatures. The area then became volcanic and as the sandstone eroded away, it left the conical and table-shaped mountains that are characteristic of Karoo.
Karoo National Park is also known for its connection with the Quagga Project, a project run by Reinhold Rau to bring back an animal that looked and acted as much like the extinct quagga as possible. In 1998, fourteen quagga-like zebras were released into the park and, in January 2005, the most quagga-like foal was born, with narrower and fainter stripes in a more limited area of its body. This led Rau to predict that a full quagga would emerge by the fourth generation of breeding.
Famous quotes containing the words national and/or park:
“The American, if he has a spark of national feeling, will be humiliated by the very prospect of a foreigner’s visit to Congress—these, for the most part, illiterate hacks whose fancy vests are spotted with gravy, and whose speeches, hypocritical, unctuous, and slovenly, are spotted also with the gravy of political patronage, these persons are a reflection on the democratic process rather than of it; they expose it in its process rather than of it; they expose it in its underwear.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“Therefore awake! make haste, I say,
And let us, without staying,
All in our gowns of green so gay
Into the Park a-maying!”
—Unknown. Sister, Awake! (L. 9–12)