Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park - The Wildlife Section of The Park

The Wildlife Section of The Park

The wildlife park includes tall riverine forest with palm trees, miombo woodland and grassland with plenty of birds, and animals including giraffe, zebra, warthog, sable, eland, buffalo, impala and other antelope. Animal numbers fell in droughts over the last two decades. The park contained two white rhino which are not indigenous and were imported from South Africa - they were both poached during the night of June 6, 2007. One was shot dead and dehorned not far from the gate and the other received serious bullet wounds but has triumphed against all odds and still lives in the park under twenty four hours surveillance. As of June, 2009 the number of white Rhino in the park has been increased to five animals with plans to introduce further animals in due course. The indigenous (black rhino) was believed extinct in Zambia but has recently been reintroduced in a pilot area). Elephants are sometimes seen in the park when they cross the river in the dry season from the Zimbabwean side. Hippopotamus and crocodile can be seen from the river bank. Vervet monkeys and baboons are common as they are in the rest of the national park outside the wildlife section. As of January 2009 the commercial wildlife company, Lion Encounter, has been operating a "walking with Lions" experience within the park, with further plans to start a breeding programme for lions within the soon to be expanded Dambwa Forest section of the park. Within the wildlife park is the Old Drift cemetery where the first European settlers were buried. They made camp by the river, but kept succumbing to a strange and fatal illness. They blamed the yellow/green-barked 'Fever Trees' for this incurable malady, while all the time it was the malarial mosquito causing their demise. Before long the community moved to higher ground and the town of Livingstone emerged.