Sapo National Park is a national park in Sinoe County, Liberia that covers an area of 1,800 square km. It is the country's largest protected area of rainforest and contains the second-largest area of primary tropical rainforest in western Africa. Sapo National Park is located in the Upper Guinean forest ecosystem, a biodiversity hotspot with very high mammal species diversity. Sapo National Park is a national park in Sinoe County, Liberia. It is the country's largest protected area of rainfores and its only national park, and contains the second-largest area of primary tropical rainforest in West Africa after Taï National Park in neighbouring Côte d'Ivoire Agriculture, construction, fishing, hunting, human settlement, and logging are prohibited in the park. Sapo National Park is located in the Upper Guinean forest ecosystem, a biodiversity hotspot that has "the highest mammal species diversity of any region in the world", according to Conservation International,[8][9] and in the Western Guinean lowland forests ecoregion, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature's ecoregions classification scheme.
Sapo National Park (SNP), located in the south-central portion of Liberia, encompasses 180,363 ha of lowland rainforest, including swampy areas, dryland and riparian forests, and represents one of - if not the most - intact forest ecosystem in Liberia. Notable fauna within the park include forest elephant (Loxodonta africana cyclotis), Jentink’s (Cephalophus jentinki) and Zebra Duikers (C. zebra) and large primate populations, including the Diana monkey (Cercopithecus diana), red colobus (Procolobus badius), black and white Colobus (Colobus polycomos) and the western chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus). Also found within the park are several populations of the endangered pygmy hippopotamus (Hexaprotodon liberiensis). Sapo National Park (SNP), located in the south-central portion of Liberia, encompasses 180,363 ha of lowland rainforest, including swampy areas, dryland and riparian forests, and represents one of - if not the most - intact forest ecosystem in Liberia. Notable fauna within the park include forest elephant (Loxodonta africana cyclotis), Jentink’s (Cephalophus jentinki) and Zebra Duikers (C. zebra) and large primate populations, including the Diana monkey (Cercopithecus diana), red colobus (Procolobus badius), black and white Colobus (Colobus polycomos) and the western chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus). Also found within the park are several populations of the endangered pygmy hippopotamus (Hexaprotodon liberiensis).
'Hold still," says my wife, plucking a large insect from my beard as we stopped by a small beach along the Sinoe River minutes after a downpour blasted through the lush canopy of trees. "It was camouflaged in there." That's when it struck me just how far away from civilization we really were. To get here - deep in one of the last remaining bits of virgin West African rain forest - we had taken the daily one-and-a-half-hour UN peacekeeping helicopter flight from Liberia's war-ravaged capital, Monrovia, to the remote coastal town of Greenville. Then we took a jarring, three-hour truck ride through a seemingly endless series of fender-deep mud puddles to the Sapo National Park headquarters. From there, it was a four-hour hike through dense jungle, including a river crossing on a tiny, makeshift raft.RS "These are the rapids," proclaims Blamah Goll, the jovial chief park warden, laughing as he tells us how a UN official once stripped to his skivvies and frolicked in the currents. Few outsiders have been to this park. It's simply too hard to get to, even for the most intrepid traveler. Indeed, the country itself - ravaged by a brutal, 14-year civil war that ended in 2003 - is hardly a tourist destination. And Sapo is no Yellowstone. There's no infrastructure whatsoever. Our group of four - two city-slicker Liberians from Monrovia, my wife who shot photos for the trip, and I - stayed in the warden's house, a small cement structure recently built thanks to money from the US Agency for International Development. But there's no visitor housing, no facilities. The "main entrance" to the park is two hours away from the warden's house, accessible only on foot, and it is in no way distinguishable from any other stretch of jungle along the river. Once inside the park, there are no trails. You have to rely completely on the park staff and the local guides - stern-faced ex-hunters hired so they'd stop poaching the endangered animals in the park for "bush meat."
