Mana Pools National Park

Mana Pools National Park is one of the important national parks located in Zimbabwe. It is also one of the most well-known game-watching sites in the African continent.

Mana Pools National Park, along with Sapi and Chewore Safari Area, is considered as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. It is essentially a wildlife preservation area, situated in Northern Zimbabwe. This popular national park houses a wide variety of vegetation and wildlife.

The national park is a part of the lower Zambezi River in the country where the river basin becomes converted into a wide area of water bodies following every rainy season in Zimbabwe. Since the water bodies eventually dehydrate and retreat, the area draws various big wildlife species looking for water.

In Shona dialect, Mana stands for “four” in accordance with four big permanent ponds created by the paths of the center of Zambezi River. Prominent features of the Mana Pools National Park include the following:

• 2,500 sq km of river front
• Islands
• Ponds and other forms of water bodies
• Ridges
• On the two sides of Zambezi River, there are jungles of wild figs, mahogany, ebony trees and monkey-bread trees
  
  In spite of all these attractive features, Mana Pools National Park is one of the least developed national parks in the southern part of Africa. The park was protected from a hydro-electric project in the former part of the 1980s, which would have experienced the inundation of this later World Heritage Site. Different species of wildlife found here include elephants, buffalos, hippopotamuses, and crocodiles.
  
  

  UNESCO World Heritage Site

  
  The name of Mana Pools National Park has been included into the list of World Heritage Sites by UNESCO in 1984.