Rubondo Island National Park
Forested island in Lake Victoria, with chimpanzees and sitatunga.
Overview
Rubondo is an island in the south-west of Lake Victoria, the largest island national park in Africa: 456 square kilometres in all, of which rather less than half is dry land and the rest is water and eleven small islets. Its history is unusual. Between 1966 and 1969 Bernhard Grzimek of the Frankfurt Zoological Society released seventeen chimpanzees here, most of them confiscated from the pet and laboratory trade in Europe; their descendants live wild in the island forest and are now partly habituated, though finding them is genuinely hard work. Rubondo is also one of the best places anywhere to see sitatunga, the swamp antelope with splayed hooves that can walk on floating vegetation, and the marshy shoreline suits it perfectly. Bushbuck, vervet monkey, spotted-necked otter, hippo and crocodile are all here, the birding is excellent, and there is a single camp on the island.