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Forested hills rising behind oil palms and a papaya tree, under a partly cloudy sky.

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Equatorial Guinea

Monte Alén National Park

The largest national park of Equatorial Guinea. Card in preparation.

Historic site

Forest in the Monte Alén National Park, Equatorial Guinea. Photo: Mehlauge, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Sources beyond UNESCO and Wikipedia: 1 (1 academic). Check each source's status in the list at the end of the card. It was published without a prior review by people from the place. If something is wrong or missing, tell the project.

This card keeps two kinds of knowledge apart: what the documented record says, and what the people who know the place say. Each is labelled, so a reader always knows which one they are reading.

Jump to what people who know this place say

In the record

Background

Monte Alén National Park is near the centre of Equatorial Guinea. Wikipedia says it was established in 1990, covers 2,000 km² and is the country's largest national park.[1] The article names the goliath frog, the biggest frog in the world, among the amphibians found there, and says hunting it is prohibited.[1]

Great apes and hunting, as reported in 2020

Researchers from the Bristol Zoological Society wrote in 2020 that the Monte Alén–Monts de Cristal–Abanga landscape between Equatorial Guinea and Gabon was identified as of exceptional conservation importance for great apes, and that Equatorial Guinea has more than 16 primate species.[2]

In a 2019 pilot study with camera traps, hunting activity was detected 184 times, with many snares and shotgun shells along main trails, and hunters with packs of more than five dogs each, a threat not documented before. Gorillas were recorded only twice in four months. The researchers say there is virtually no on-the-ground law enforcement in the protected areas.[2]

The programme, using camera traps, acoustic recording, transect surveys and invertebrate DNA, grew from 6 cameras over 30 square kilometres to 20 cameras from August 2019, with 30 or more planned for 2020 and 2021.[2]

Not yet sourced
  • Almost everything beyond size and date: the forest, the other wildlife, the communities and who manages the park.
  • This place was chosen by the project as one of Equatorial Guinea's best known; the country has no site on the World Heritage List, and the choice should be checked with Equatoguinean sources.
  • Local voices: none yet.
  • That account is written by the research team that runs the monitoring: Equatorial Guinean voices and the authorities' view are not included, and the figures are from a 2019 pilot study.

Sources

  1. Encyclopedia · to verify[1] Monte Alén National Park. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org retrieved 7 Oct 2026
    Used for background that the UNESCO record does not give. Each statement is limited to the article's lead and opening sections; confirm against specialist sources.
  2. Academic[2] Patrick McLaughlin, Grainne McCabe and David Fernández, A Long-Term Monitoring Programme for Great Apes in Monte Alén National Park. Berggorilla & Regenwald Direkt (article by the Bristol Zoological Society team), 1 Jun 2020. www.berggorilla.org retrieved 7 Oct 2026
    June 2020. Written by the researchers who run the programme, so a project's own account; the exact day is not shown.