Abstract
ON November 12, 1935, a decree was passed which doubled the area of what was already one of the most remarkable natural reserves in the world, the Pare National Albert du Congo Beige. The extension, carrying the park northward and westward to Lake Edward which it incorporates, increases the area of the reserve from 390,000 hectares to 856,790 hectares, and its average length and width to 270 km. and 40 km. respectively. Within this area, the greatest diversity of habitat is to be found, for it stretches from the equator to the extreme east of the Belgian colony, and rises from 850 metres in the Semliki Plain to 5,119 metres at Peak Marguerite. As a consequence, the region now included presents a succession of stages of vegetation from primitive tropical forest to the equatorial alpine zone, and in plants and animals contains a rich flora and fauna comprising many forms not elsewhere to be found. The value of the new extension is the greater since the Belgian reserve is contiguous with the British Uganda reserve, and ought to permit the adoption, through an extensive area in which the needs of the fauna and flora are similar, of common protective measures, such as were contemplated in the London Convention of November 1933 (Article 6) relative to the conservation of the natural fauna and flora, to which Belgium signified her adhesion.
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The Albert National Park in the Belgian Congo. Nature 137, 428 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/137428a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/137428a0