Aberdares National Park
The Aberdares National Park covers about 60 sq km of the highest parts of the Nyandarua (foremerly Aberdares) Mountain Range (Nyandarua = 'drying hide' in Kikuyu). The Park includes some of the most pristine highland rainforest in Kenya. Much of the Park is located at an altitude exceeding 3000 m. The vegetation includes hardwoods such as Podocarpus, Hagenia and Juniperus, with bamboo thickets below them and tropical moorlands covered in Erica above them. The Aberdares National Park is a natural 'water tower'; its forests capture the seasonal rains and moderate the gentle release of this water to the Naivasha in the Rift Valley (westwards flowing streams), to the Tana river then the Indian Ocean (eastwards flowing streams), to The Ewaso Njiro river which sustains Samburu & Buffalo Springs Game Reserves in the north and to the Central Province of Kenya including Nairobi's water supply reservoirs (southward flowing streams).
To increase the level of protection and to prevent illegal logging, the Park boundary has progressively been made impassable since 1998 by a high voltage electric fence, constructed by the Rhino Ark charity through donations from an annual event on 1st June every year called the 'Rhino Charge'; this also protects the surrounding farmland by incursion by local wildlife, such as elephants and monkeys, which often raid agricultural crops (see the photograph below which illustrates the fence line). Visits to the Park are possible but difficult due to frequent rains and to the poor state of the roads; as a result, the Park has low tourist attendance compared with many others.
The eastern side of the Park is very abrupt as the mountains rise steeply from the Kinangop Plateau; the streams draining from the high moorlands into Naivasha exit the Park in torrents through deep gorges, so the forest is relatively small on this side, compared to the greater area on the western side where the famous tourist lodges of 'Treetops' and 'The Ark' are located around salt lick and watering holes to attract nocturnal wildlife.
The Aberdare forests are the last stronghold of the rare bongo antelope (please see film below the photograph) as well as forest elephants and black serval cats among the more usual forest animals .
