South Luangwa National Park

Size and landscape

The South Luangwa is the second largest of Zambia’s national parks, created in 1972. It occupies 9,050 km2 in the mid-Luangwa valley.

The landscape has all the major vegetation types of Central African Valleys and provides continuous and spectacular ranges of rifts and scarps from Great East African Valley and the Muchinga Escarpment lies adjacent to the park from North to South.

The vegetation of the park is predominately covered by miombo woodland on freely draining sandy soils while the valley floor is typically characterised by the occurance of the riparian woodlands, mopane woodlands, acacia-combetrum woodlands, fiadhebia-combretum woodlands and patches of palm communities.

Habitat and animal population

South Luangwa is one of the best-known and most popular parks because of its abundant wildlife. The park is renowned for the abundance of its large mammals. The status of the habitat is good, this is evidenced by the parks large concentration of mammals, prolific bird life including migrant water birds and a large number of crocodiles and hippos found in the park’s perennial rivers. The occurance of various topographic units, lithologics and soil types has given rise to corresponding different vegetation types each characterized by unique floristic composition, dominant species, structures and physiognomy providing good breeding cover and foliage to the animals. The prominent grasslands within the floodplains of the Luangwa River provides food for the grazers, while the Ox-bow lakes provides habitats for water loving animals.

Animals in the Park and Lupande GMA comprise of elephant, impala, buffalo, puku, zebra, roan antelope, waterbuck, kudu, lichtensteins hartebeest, thornicraft giraffe, reedbuck and eland. Elephants, buffalo, hippopotamus, impala, puku, zebra, waterbuck, warthog, baboon and vervet monkey are exceptionally common. The thornicroft’s giraffe and cooksons wildebeest are subspecies found only in the Luangwa Valley. The larger carnivores include lion, leopard, cheetah, spotted hyena, side-stripped jackal and wild dog.

The Park does have a variety of exceptional resources as one of the largest sanctuaries that supports a large diversity of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and invertebrates. The park contains other rich cultural and geographical sites such as some historical and cultural sites in the park that include Chichele burial site for local chiefs and Nyamaluma hot springs for settlements. The Luangwa River flowing down the center of the valley is one of the most important exceptional resources of the park. The unspoiled wilderness areas of the region and the scenic landscape associated with the geographical formation of the whole rift valley system also contribute to exceptional resources.

The Park does have a lot of tourism activities, which add to a variety of experience such as walking and photographic safaris, filming and angling.

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