Nairobi National Park

by
on April 18, 2012
Nairobi National Park, is only a 30 minute drive from downtown. Despite how close it is to the city you can still see some amazing sites! This makes it a great option for a day trip out of Nairobi on a day you have a long layover or if you are in Nairobi for work and want to get a day of sightseeing in.

Nairobi National ParkSome interesting facts about Nairobi National Park:

  • Nairobi National Park is the oldest national park in the country, established in 1946. It’s a free-ranging park fenced off only on the side closest to the city.
  • It used to be 124 square kilometres. Bits and pieces have been hived off over the years reducing it to 117 square kilometres.
  • It is a rhino sanctuary with 76 indigenous black rhinos and 13 white rhinos.
  • There are more than 40 lions in the park.
  • Each lion under the lion ID project is identified by the whisker patterns that are as unique as human fingerprints.
  • Other predators in the park are cheetah, leopard, jackals, stripped hyena and the aardwolf.
  • Other increasingly rare species are the Chandler’s reedbuck, Clawless otter and the tiny zorilla.
  • It is a dry season refuge for the wildlife from the Kitengela plains and the Athi-Kapiti plains.
  • Once part of a larger ecosystem stretching from Amboseli National Park to Maasai Mara National Reserve, it was part of the elephant migratory corridor.
  • The last time an elephant strayed across the ancient path was in the late 1990s.
  • The highly endangered African wild dog brought back from the brink of extinction is seen more often in the park with radio collars fitted on them to enable radio tracking.Nairobi National Park
  • It had the second largest wildebeest migration until Mombasa Road was built across the Athi plains. The count
    was 100,000 wildebeest, which in 1975 fell to 28,000. Today there are fewer than 1,000 in the highly fragmented ecosystem. However zebra numbers have increased because they are less migratory than the wildebeest.
  • There is centuries-old rock art in caves inside the park
  • You can also include a visit to the animal orphanage located inside the park as part of your visit

Source: The East African. For more information about planning a visit to Nairobi National Park email [email protected]