The Namib-Naukluft National Park is a

national park A national park is a nature park designated for conservation (ethic), conservation purposes because of unparalleled national natural, historic, or cultural significance. It is an area of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that is protecte ...

in western

Namibia Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country on the west coast of Southern Africa. Its borders include the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south; in the no ...

, situated between the coast of the

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the world's five borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions, with an area of about . It covers approximately 17% of Earth#Surface, Earth's surface and about 24% of its water surface area. During the ...

and the edge of the

Great Escarpment The Great Escarpment is a major topographical feature in Africa that consists of steep slopes from the high central Southern African plateauAtlas of Southern Africa. (1984). p. 13. Reader's Digest Association, Cape Town downward in the directio ...

. It encompasses part of the

Namib Desert The Namib ( ; ) is a coastal desert in Southern Africa. According to the broadest definition, the Namib stretches for more than along the Atlantic coasts of Angola, Namibia, and northwest South Africa, extending southward from the Carunjamba Ri ...

(considered the world's oldest desert), the Naukluft mountain range, and the lagoon at Sandwich Harbour. The best-known area of the park and one of the main visitor attractions in Namibia is

Sossusvlei Sossusvlei (sometimes written Sossus Vlei) is a salt and clay pan surrounded by high red dunes, located in the southern part of the Namib Desert, in the Namib-Naukluft National Park of Namibia. The name "Sossusvlei" is often used in an exten ...

, a clay pan surrounded by dunes, and Sesriem, a small canyon of the

Tsauchab The Tsauchab is an Ephemerality, ephemeral river in the Hardap Region of central Namibia. Its source is in the southern Naukluft Mountains, from where it flows westwards through the Namib-Naukluft National Park into Sossusvlei, an endorheic ba ...

. The desert research station of

Gobabeb The Gobabeb Namib Research Institute, short: Gobabeb, is a centre for dry land training and research in Namibia. It is located in the Namib Desert, south-east of Walvis Bay. Gobabeb was founded by the Austrian entomologist Charles Koch in ...

is situated within the park.

Location and description

With an overall area of , the Namib-Naukluft National Park was at the time of its last expansion the largest game park in

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

and the fourth largest in the world. It consists of a strip of land on the Atlantic Ocean, including of sea, that extends roughly north-to-south from the

Swakop River The Swakop River () is a major river in western central Namibia. Its source is in the Khomas Highland. From there it flows westwards through the town of Okahandja, the historic mission station at Gross Barmen, and the settlement of Otjimb ...

to the B4 road to

Lüderitz Lüderitz is a town in the ǁKaras Region of southern Namibia. It lies on one of the least hospitable coasts in Africa. It is a port developed around Robert Harbour and Shark Island. Lüderitz had a population of 16,125 people in 2023. Th ...

Wildlife

A surprising collection of creatures survives in the hyper-arid region, including

snake Snakes are elongated limbless reptiles of the suborder Serpentes (). Cladistically squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales much like other members of the group. Many species of snakes have s ...

gecko Geckos are small, mostly carnivorous lizards that have a wide distribution, found on every continent except Antarctica. Belonging to the infraorder Gekkota, geckos are found in warm climates. They range from . Geckos are unique among lizards ...

s, unusual insects,

hyena Hyenas or hyaenas ( ; from Ancient Greek , ) are feliform carnivoran mammals belonging to the family Hyaenidae (). With just four extant species (each in its own genus), it is the fifth-smallest family in the order Carnivora and one of the sma ...

gemsbok The gemsbok (''Oryx gazella''), or South African oryx, is a large antelope in the genus '' Oryx''. It is endemic to the dry and barren regions of Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and (parts of) Zimbabwe, mainly inhabiting the Kalahari and Nami ...

springboks The South Africa national rugby union team, commonly known as the Springboks (colloquially the Boks, Bokke or Amabhokobhoko) is the country's national team governed by the South African Rugby Union. The Springboks play in green and gold jersey ...

leopard The leopard (''Panthera pardus'') is one of the five extant cat species in the genus ''Panthera''. It has a pale yellowish to dark golden fur with dark spots grouped in rosettes. Its body is slender and muscular reaching a length of with a ...

African wildcat The African wildcat (''Felis lybica'') is a small wildcat species with sandy grey fur, pale vertical stripes on the sides and around the face. It is native to Africa, West and Central Asia, and is distributed to Rajasthan in India and Xinjiang ...

cape fox The Cape fox (''Vulpes chama''), also called the asse, cama fox or the silver-backed fox, is a small species of fox, native to southern Africa. It is also called a South African version of a fennec fox due to its similarly big ears. It is the ...

es,

baboon Baboons are primates comprising the biology, genus ''Papio'', one of the 23 genera of Old World monkeys, in the family Cercopithecidae. There are six species of baboon: the hamadryas baboon, the Guinea baboon, the olive baboon, the yellow ba ...

caracal The caracal (''Caracal caracal'') () is a medium-sized Felidae, wild cat native to Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and arid areas of Pakistan and northwestern India. It is characterised by a robust build, long legs, a short face, long ...

bat-eared fox The bat-eared fox (''Otocyon megalotis'') is a species of fox found on the African savanna. It is the only extant species of the genus ''Otocyon'' and a Basal (phylogenetics), basal species of Canidae, canid. Fossil records indicate this canid ...

es and

jackal Jackals are Canidae, canids native to Africa and Eurasia. While the word has historically been used for many canines of the subtribe Canina (subtribe), canina, in modern use it most commonly refers to three species: the closely related black-b ...

Geography

The region is characterised by high, isolated

inselberg An inselberg or monadnock ( ) is an isolated rock hill, knob, ridge, or small mountain that rises abruptly from a gently sloping or virtually level surrounding plain. In Southern Africa, a similar formation of granite is known as a koppie, an ...

s and

kopjes An inselberg or monadnock ( ) is an isolated rock hill, knob, ridge, or small mountain that rises abruptly from a gently sloping or virtually level surrounding plain. In Southern Africa, a similar formation of granite is known as a koppie, an ...

(the

Afrikaans Afrikaans is a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language spoken in South Africa, Namibia and to a lesser extent Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and also Argentina where there is a group in Sarmiento, Chubut, Sarmiento that speaks the Pat ...

term for rocky outcrops), made up of dramatic blood-red

granites Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies under ...

, rich in

feldspars Feldspar ( ; sometimes spelled felspar) is a group of rock-forming aluminium tectosilicate minerals, also containing other cations such as sodium, calcium, potassium, or barium. The most common members of the feldspar group are the ''plagiocla ...

and

sandstone Sandstone is a Clastic rock#Sedimentary clastic rocks, clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of grain size, sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate mineral, silicate grains, Cementation (geology), cemented together by another mineral. Sand ...

. The easternmost part of the park covers the

Naukluft Mountains The Naukluft Mountains (Afrikaans and German: ''Naukluftberge'') are a mountain range in central Namibia. The southern part of the mountain range forms the easternmost part of the Namib-Naukluft National Park. The northern mountains are occupied ...

. More moisture comes in as a

fog Fog is a visible aerosol consisting of tiny water droplets or ice crystals suspended in the air at or near the Earth's surface. Reprint from Fog can be considered a type of low-lying cloud usually resembling stratus and is heavily influenc ...

off the

then falls as rain, with the average of 106 millimeters of rainfall per year concentrated in February and April. The winds that bring in the fog are also responsible for creating the park's towering

sand dune A dune is a landform composed of wind- or water-driven sand. It typically takes the form of a mound, ridge, or hill. An area with dunes is called a dune system or a dune complex. A large dune complex is called a dune field, while broad, flat ...

s, whose burnt orange color is a sign of their age. The orange color develops over time as

iron Iron is a chemical element; it has symbol Fe () and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, forming much of Earth's o ...

in the sand is

oxidized Redox ( , , reduction–oxidation or oxidation–reduction) is a type of chemical reaction in which the oxidation states of the reactants change. Oxidation is the loss of electrons or an increase in the oxidation state, while reduction is ...

, like rusty metal; the older the dune, the brighter the color. These dunes are the tallest in the world, in places rising more than 300 meters (almost 1000 feet) above the desert floor. The dunes taper off near the coast, and

lagoon A lagoon is a shallow body of water separated from a larger body of water by a narrow landform, such as reefs, barrier islands, barrier peninsulas, or isthmuses. Lagoons are commonly divided into ''coastal lagoons'' (or ''barrier lagoons'') an ...

wetland A wetland is a distinct semi-aquatic ecosystem whose groundcovers are flooded or saturated in water, either permanently, for years or decades, or only seasonally. Flooding results in oxygen-poor ( anoxic) processes taking place, especially ...

s, and

mudflat Mudflats or mud flats, also known as tidal flats or, in Ireland, slob or slobs, are coastal wetlands that form in intertidal areas where sediments have been deposited by tides or rivers. A global analysis published in 2019 suggested that tidal ...

s located along the shore attract hundreds of thousands of birds. 'Namib' means "open space", and the Namib Desert gave its name to form Namibia – "land of open spaces".

History

The park was established in 1907 when the German Colonial Administration proclaimed three game reserves in

German South West Africa German South West Africa () was a colony of the German Empire from 1884 until 1915, though Germany did not officially recognise its loss of this territory until the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. German rule over this territory was punctuated by ...

. Today's Namib-Naukluft park was proclaimed as "Game Reserve No. 3". The other two were the

Omuramba Omuramba (plural: ''Omiramba'') is the term for ancient river-beds found in the Kalahari Desert of Africa, notably in the North Eastern part of Namibia and North Western part of Botswana. The word is taken from the Herero language. An omuramba pr ...

Omatako and

Etosha Etosha National Park is a national park in northwestern Namibia and one of the largest national parks in Africa. It was proclaimed a game reserve in March 1907 in Ordinance 88 by the Governor of German South West Africa, Friedrich von Lindequist ...

. The northern border of the reserve was south of the

, and the southern border was south of the

Kuiseb River The Kuiseb River is an ephemeral river in western-central Namibia. Its source is in the Khomas Highland west of Windhoek. From there it flows westwards through the Namib-Naukluft National Park and the Namib desert to Walvis Bay. Several settlement ...

, so that the park included the Kuiseb but excluded the Swakop due to the economic activities at its banks. After

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

the South African administration of

South West Africa South West Africa was a territory under Union of South Africa, South African administration from 1915 to 1990. Renamed ''Namibia'' by the United Nations in 1968, Independence of Namibia, it became independent under this name on 21 March 1990. ...

confirmed the proclamation of the Germans. For the Namib-Naukluft Park, the area of Sandwich Harbour was added in 1941, and a small extension of the southern border followed in 1962. In 1966 "Game Reserve No. 3" was deproclaimed, and the Namib Desert Park was established in its stead. The Namib Desert Park included a small area north of the Swakop River where ''

Welwitschia ''Welwitschia'' is a monotypic genus of gnetophytes containing only the species ''Welwitschia mirabilis''. It is named after the Austrian botanist Friedrich Welwitsch, who documented the plant in the 1850s. In common use, it is sometimes ref ...

'' grow, as well as the Moon Landscape east of

Swakopmund Swakopmund ("Mouth of the Swakop River, Swakop") is a city on the coast of western Namibia, west of the Namibian capital Windhoek via the B2 road (Namibia), B2 main road. It is the capital of the Erongo Region, Erongo administrative district. It ...

. In 1979 two more large areas were added. The ''Naukluft Mountain Zebra Park'' was included so that the

now formed part of the protected area. It previously comprised 14 commercial farms that were bought by the government to protect the Hartmann mountain zebra. The second area added was a strip of the

, making the Namib-Naukluft Park Namibia's first marine reserve. The park's present boundaries were established in 1986 when the government was given control over parts of the '' Sperrgebiet'', an area restricted for diamond mining. This vast strip of land has remained inaccessible to the general population but is now part of the Namib-Naukluft Park.

Gallery

Image:Namib-Naukluft-Park-Borders-Sat.jpg, Satellite photo indicating the borders of the Namib-Naukluft National Park and the Namib Rand Nature Reserve File:Stenocara gracilipes.jpg, Namib desert beetle, ''Stenocara gracilipes'' Image:NEO namib-naukluft big.jpeg, High dunes in the Namib desert File:Dead_Vlei_4.jpg, 550-year-old dead trees in Dead Vlei Image:Sossusvlei Dune Namib Desert Namibia Luca Galuzzi 2004.JPG, A typical dune in the park File:Namib.jpg, Moon landscape near Swakopmund File:Eupodotis rueppellii (Namib-Naukluft, 2011).jpg, Rüppell's korhaan in the grasslands near the dunes File:Namib-Naukluft National Park in Namibia.jpg, Isolated quiver tree at Namib-Naukluft Park Dune nel Parco Nazionale Namib-Naukluft.tif, Dunes in the Namib-Naukluft National Park Roard to Dead Vlei panorama.tif, Road to Dead Vlei in the Namib-Naukluft National Park Namib-Naukluft National Park.tif, Namib-Naukluft National Park Namib-Naukluft National Park Trees.tif, Trees in the Namib-Naukluft National Park Namib Naukluft National Park.tif, Namib-Naukluft National Park Strada nel deserto del Namib nel Namib-Naukluft National Park.tif, Road in the Namib Desert in the Namib-Naukluft National Park

References

External links

* *
Ministry of Environment and Tourism report
- A major centre for Namib ecological and development research since 1962; joint venture betwee
the Ministry of Environment and Tourism
an
Visiting Namib-Naukluft National Park, Namibia
{{National Parks of Namibia Namibian savanna woodlands Protected areas established in 1907 1907 establishments in German South West Africa de:Namib-Skelettküste-Nationalpark#Namib-Naukluft