Home to a wide diversity of wildlife, the popular Queen Elizabeth National Park seats an estimated 1978 square kilometers making it the second largest National park in Uganda and derives its name from the fallen monarch of Great Britain, Queen Elizabeth 11.
A number of people would wonder why the park doesn’t have a local name yet it existed and was gazetted way before the queen’s visit. Allow me to inform you a little, the park was gazetted in 1952 and was then named “Kazinga National Park”. But two years later, after the queen’s visit to the park, the name was changed to “Queen Elizabeth National Park” in commemoration of her second and 1st official visit to the Pearl of Africa and Kazinga National Park in particular. The place where she stood to view the park was as well named the queen’s pavilion up to date, this shows how much respect and honor Ugandans attribute to the Queen.
I’m sure everyone knows her majesty, Queen Elizabeth Alexandra Mary the 11, Queen of the United Kingdom, and several other Commonwealth countries from 4th Feb 1952 to her death on 8th September 2022. Her reign of 70 years and 214 days is the longest of Britain’s monarchs and the longest of any verified female monarch in the history of the world and was succeeded by prince Charles 111 her eldest son.
Queen Elizabeth is a special and darling one to Ugandans and visited the Pearl of Africa on three different occasions one of which is when she toured the now ‘one of the most popular destinations of the Pearl’. These are as follows,
Her 1st visit was sad a very short one as she just made a stopover at Entebbe airport in 1952 on her way back to England from Kenya after she and her newlywed husband Prince Phillip the duke of Edinburgh had learned of the unfortunate news of her father’s, King George 1V’s death. This was followed by her coronation as Queen later that year.
As a queen, she and her husband came back to Uganda for the 2nd time and 1st official visit to Uganda to open up Uganda’s 1st hydroelectric power station In 1954. She carried out two activities that day. One was at the dam where she made a stopover and opened the gates to the station and the second was inside the station where she started one of the turbines and declared Owen falls dam officially open.
Her 3rd visit was in 2007 accompanied by her husband, Prince Phillip the Duke of Edinburgh. This time, she came to attend the bi-annual commonwealth of governments meeting as the head of the commonwealth countries. The meeting was hosted and chaired by the president of Uganda H.E Yoweri Kaguta Museveni. And this was her last visit.
Queen Elizabeth national park is also twinned with Queen Elizabeth County Park in England in a cultural exchange project of mutual support whose main objective is supporting conservation through working closely with and empowering local communities.
The park adjoins the kyambura game reserve to the east which also joins the kigezi game reserve. The park also has volcano features like deep crater lakes such as lake Katwe from which salt that is supplied in the entire country is extracted in Uganda.
It is home to abundant wildlife species of primates and mammals like chimpanzees, vervet monkeys, black and white colobus monkeys, baboons, red-tailed monkeys, etc in kyambura gorge. It also harbors the largest concentration of hippopotami in Uganda, African elephants, Uganda kobs, topi, waterbucks, and warthogs. African buffalo, etc. These sum up an overall 95 mammals in the park including the famous tree-climbing lions and so many others.
I believe that most of the Ugandans would agree with me that all the Queen’s visits to the Pearl of Africa symbolize “the unity of purpose of all parts of Uganda and the people who live in it”.
Visit Queen Elizabeth national park to enjoy a variety of game activities like chimp tracking in kyambura gorge, guided game drives, boat cruises, guided nature walks, birding at its best and so much more.
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