Qualla: Upemba National Park

Upemba National Park: Introduction

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AmTi2017!, CC BY-SA 4.0. On 15 May 1939, the Belgian colonial administration of what was then the Belgian Congo signed Upemba National Park into existence. At 17,730 square kilometers, it was the largest national park in all of Africa. A 1975 boundary revision trimmed it to a still-enormous 10,000 square kilometers of core park plus a 3,000-square-kilometer annex. Within those boundaries sits the Upemba Depression - a lush maze of shallow lakes and papyrus marshes threaded by the upper Lualaba River - climbing away into the drier Kibara Plateau mountains above. Biologists counted some 1,800 species here, a few of them discovered as late as 2003. Freshwater elephant fish, cichlids, papyrus thickets, hippopotamus, and a particular species of termite whose mushroom, Termitomyces titanicus, grows to 60 centimeters across. The park is remote, under pressure, and still staggeringly alive.

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Image: AmTi2017! | CC BY-SA 4.0

Upemba National Park: The Depression and the Plateau

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Blimeo, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Upemba Depression is one of the strangest bodies of water in central Africa. Lake Upemba itself is shallow - only 3.2 meters at its maximum depth - and the water level rises and falls with the seasons, high from March to June, low from October to January. The lake is famous f...

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Image: Blimeo | CC BY-SA 4.0

Upemba National Park: Life on the Water

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Blimeo, CC BY-SA 4.0. The lakes, rivers, and swamps of Upemba support a particularly diverse freshwater fauna. More than 30 species of Cyprinidae swim here, along with Mormyridae - freshwater elephant fish, with their distinctive long snouts and weak electric fields used to navigate murky water. Barbu...

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Image: Blimeo | CC BY-SA 4.0

Upemba National Park: Poaching, Militia, and the Slow Fight to Hold On

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Blimeo, CC BY-SA 4.0. Upemba has faced every pressure an African park can face. Poaching has always been present, and militia violence during and after the Second Congo War reached into the park's remote reaches. Refugee settlements inside park boundaries added pressure on wildlife and water. Pollutio...

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Image: Blimeo | CC BY-SA 4.0

Upemba National Park: Old Kingdoms Under the Water

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Blimeo, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Upemba Depression holds more than natural history. Archaeological work in the area has documented the Upemba culture - a pre-colonial kingdom that flourished in the depression from roughly the 8th to 19th centuries, whose people fished the lakes, forged iron, traded copper fr...

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Image: Blimeo | CC BY-SA 4.0