The Namib-Naukluft Park is a

national park A national park is a natural park in use for conservation purposes, created and protected by national governments. Often it is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or owns. Although individual ...

in western

Namibia Namibia (, ), officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. Its western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and ea ...

, situated between the coast of the

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...

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 ( ; pt, Namibe) is a coastal desert in Southern Africa. The name is of Khoekhoegowab origin and means "vast place". According to the broadest definition, the Namib stretches for more than along the Atlantic coasts of Angola, Nami ...

(considered the world's oldest desert), the Naukluft mountain range, and the lagoon at

Sandwich Harbour Sandwich Harbour ( pt, Porto d'Ilhéu), also known as Sandwich Bay, Sandvishawe, Sandvisbaai and Sandfisch Bai is an area on the Atlantic coast of Namibia that includes a bay in the north and a lagoon at the southern end. The name could be afte ...

. The best-known area of the park and one of the main visitor attractions in Namibia is Sossusvlei, a clay pan surrounded by dunes, and

Sesriem Sesriem is a small settlement in the Namib Desert, in the Hardap Region of Namibia, close to the southern end of the Naukluft Mountains. It is especially known because the "Sesriem gate" is the main access point to the Namib-Naukluft National Par ...

, a small canyon of the Tsauchab. 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 in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

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 ( naq, Tsoaxaub) is a major river in western central Namibia. Its river 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 se ...

to the B4 road to Lüderitz.

Wildlife

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

snake Snakes are elongated, limbless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes . Like all other squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more ...

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 throughout the world. They range from . Geckos a ...

s, unusual insects,

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

gemsbok The gemsbok or South African oryx (''Oryx gazella'') is a large antelope in the genus ''Oryx''. It is native to the extremely dry, arid regions of Southern Africa; notably, the Kalahari Desert. Some authorities formerly classified the East Afr ...

leopard The leopard (''Panthera pardus'') is one of the five extant species in the genus '' Panthera'', a member of the cat family, Felidae. It occurs in a wide range in sub-Saharan Africa, in some parts of Western and Central Asia, Southern Russia, ...

s, African wildcats, cape foxes,

baboon Baboons are primates comprising the genus ''Papio'', one of the 23 genera of Old World monkeys. There are six species of baboon: the hamadryas baboon, the Guinea baboon, the olive baboon, the yellow baboon, the Kinda baboon and the chacma ...

caracal The caracal (''Caracal caracal'') () is a medium-sized 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 tufted ...

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 considered a basal canid species. Fossil records indicate this canid first appeared during th ...

es and

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

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, a ...

s and kopjes (the

Afrikaans Afrikaans (, ) is a West Germanic language that evolved in the Dutch Cape Colony from the Dutch vernacular of Holland proper (i.e., the Hollandic dialect) used by Dutch, French, and German settlers and their enslaved people. Afrikaans gr ...

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

feldspars Feldspars are 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 ''plagioclase'' (sodium-calcium) feldspa ...

and

sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicat ...

. 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 influ ...

off the

than 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, f ...

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

iron Iron () is a chemical element with symbol Fe (from la, ferrum) 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, right in ...

in the sand is

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

, 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 ...

wetland A wetland is a distinct ecosystem that is flooded or saturated by water, either permanently (for years or decades) or seasonally (for weeks or months). Flooding results in oxygen-free (Anoxic waters, anoxic) processes prevailing, especially in t ...

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 f ...

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 (german: Deutsch-Südwestafrika) 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. With a total area of ...

. 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 p ...

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, 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 (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

the South African administration of

South West Africa South West Africa ( af, Suidwes-Afrika; german: Südwestafrika; nl, Zuidwest-Afrika) was a territory under South African administration from 1915 to 1990, after which it became modern-day Namibia. It bordered Angola (Portuguese colony before 1 ...

confirmed the proclamation of the Germans. For the Namib-Naukluft Park, the area of

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 gymnosperm genus, comprising solely the distinctive ''Welwitschia mirabilis'', endemic to the Namib desert within Namibia and Angola. ''Welwitschia'' is the only living genus of the family Welwitschiaceae and orde ...

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

Swakopmund Swakopmund (german: Mouth of the Swakop) is a city on the coast of western Namibia, west of the Namibian capital Windhoek via the B2 main road. It is the capital of the Erongo administrative district. The town has 44,725 inhabitants and covers ...

. In 1979 two more large areas were added. The ''Naukluft Mountain Zebra Park'' was included such 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 Rüppell's Korhaan (''Eupodotis rueppellii''), also known as Rüppell's bustard, is a species of bird in the family Otididae. The species is a small bustard Bustards, including floricans and korhaans, are large, terrestrial birds living ma ...

in the grasslands near the dunes File:Namib-Naukluft National Park in Namibia.jpg, Isolated

quiver tree ''Aloidendron dichotomum'', formerly ''Aloe dichotoma'', the quiver tree or kokerboom, is a tall, branching species of succulent plant, indigenous to Southern Africa, specifically in the Northern Cape province of South Africa, and parts of South ...

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