In 1932, two blocks of the forest were designated as Crown Forest Reserves — the Kayonza Crown Forest Reserve in the north and the Kasatora Crown Forest Reserve in the south, with a combined area of 207 square kilometres. In 1942, these were merged and enlarged into the Impenetrable Central Crown Forest, covering 298 square kilometres.

In 1991, the Impenetrable Central Forest Reserve was designated a national park and renamed Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, covering an area of 330.8 square kilometres. The park was declared in part to protect the mountain gorilla. Gorilla tracking became a tourist activity in April 1993, and in 1994 the park was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Flora — Extraordinary Biodiversity

Floristically, the park is among the most diverse forests in East Africa, with more than 1,000 flowering plant species, including 200 species of trees and 104 species of ferns. The property has the highest diversity of tree species — over 200, including 10 endemics — and ferns in East Africa, and may be the most important forest in Africa for montane forest butterflies, with 202 species representing 84% of Uganda’s total butterfly count, including eight Albertine endemics.

The park’s forests are afromontane — a rare vegetation type on the African continent. Located where plain and mountain forests meet, there is a continuum of low-altitude to high-altitude primary forest, one of the few large tracts of East African forest where this occurs.

Fauna

There are an estimated 120 mammal species in the park, of which 10 are primates and more than 45 are small mammals. The park hosts more than 350 bird species and more than 200 butterfly species. At least 70 out of 78 montane forest bird species occurring in the Albertine Rift are found in Bwindi, along with 22 of 36 endemics. Globally threatened mammals include the mountain gorilla, chimpanzee, l’Hoest’s monkey, and African elephant.