In 1925 C.E., a patch of volcanic highland in central Africa became the most formally protected stretch of wild land on the continent — and one of the first true national parks in the world. The Belgian colonial administration created Albert National Park in what was then the Belgian Congo, protecting a landscape that stretched from the snowcapped peaks of the Rwenzori Mountains to the lava fields of the Virunga volcanoes and the lowland forests below. It was a declaration, however imperfect in origin, that some places were worth protecting forever.
Key findings
- Albert National Park: Established by royal decree on April 21, 1925 C.E., it was the first land in Africa formally designated as a national park, covering volcanic highlands, equatorial forests, and savanna ecosystems in the eastern Belgian Congo.
- Virunga volcanoes: The park was anchored by the Virunga massif, a chain of eight volcanoes that forms one of the most biodiverse corridors on Earth and provides critical habitat for the critically endangered mountain gorilla.
- Colonial conservation: The park was established under Belgian King Albert I, whose name it bore, partly in response to international scientific pressure to protect wildlife — though the process displaced local communities who had lived in the region for generations.
What led to Albert National Park
By the early 20th century, European naturalists and explorers had begun sounding alarms about the rapid loss of wildlife across Africa. Big-game hunting, driven largely by wealthy European visitors, was stripping populations of elephants, lions, and other megafauna at a pace colonial administrators were starting to find alarming.
The Virunga region had drawn particular scientific attention. American naturalist Carl Akeley — who had spent years studying and collecting specimens in central Africa — pressed the Belgian government to protect the area, especially after encountering mountain gorillas in the Virunga highlands. His advocacy proved decisive. When Akeley died in 1926 C.E. while on an expedition to the park he had championed, he was buried within its boundaries.
The park’s creation also reflected a broader global moment. Yellowstone, established in 1872 C.E. in the United States, had pioneered the idea of nationally protected wilderness. By the 1920s C.E., that model was beginning to cross oceans — and Albert National Park carried it to Africa.
The ecology of a singular landscape
The park Akeley helped create was ecologically extraordinary. The Virunga volcanoes, some still active, rise to more than 4,500 meters. Below them lie dense montane forests that graduate into savanna and equatorial rainforest. The mountain gorilla — one of humanity’s closest living relatives — survives in this specific band of habitat and nowhere else on Earth.
The park also shelters forest elephants, hippos, okapis, chimpanzees, and hundreds of bird species. Its volcanic soils and reliable rainfall have sustained human settlement for thousands of years, and the same fertility that drew farmers and herders also helped produce an ecosystem of exceptional richness.
Scientists and conservationists have described the Virunga landscape as one of the most biologically dense places on the planet. UNESCO designated it a World Heritage Site in 1979 C.E., and it remains on the List of World Heritage in Danger due to decades of conflict in eastern Congo.
Lasting impact
Albert National Park — renamed Virunga National Park after Congolese independence in 1960 C.E. — established a precedent that would reshape how the world thought about wild places. Before 1925 C.E., Africa had game reserves but nothing with the formal, permanent protections of a national park. The Belgian decree changed that.
Its ripple effects are visible across the continent and beyond. Dozens of African nations established national parks in the decades that followed, modeled in part on the framework pioneered at Albert. The concept of setting land permanently aside — not for extraction, not for farming, not for development — took root in international conservation law and eventually in the global protected areas movement that now covers roughly 17 percent of the Earth’s land surface.
For mountain gorillas specifically, the park may have made the difference between survival and extinction. When conservation efforts intensified in the 1980s C.E. and 1990s C.E., the Virunga population numbered fewer than 250 individuals. Today, thanks to anti-poaching patrols, veterinary intervention, and sustained international support, the mountain gorilla population across the Virunga-Bwindi ecosystem has grown to more than 1,000 — the only great ape subspecies whose numbers are currently increasing.
The park’s rangers have paid an extraordinary price for that recovery. More than 200 Virunga rangers have been killed in the line of duty since record-keeping began, making it one of the most dangerous conservation postings on Earth. Their commitment — many of them from local Congolese communities — is the human foundation on which the park’s survival rests.
Blindspots and limits
The creation of Albert National Park was an act of colonial administration, carried out without the free, prior, or informed consent of the Indigenous and local communities who had long stewarded the land. Pastoralists, farmers, and forest peoples were displaced from territories their families had inhabited for centuries, a pattern that repeated across Africa as national parks spread throughout the 20th century C.E. The conservation gains that followed were real — and so were those harms. Virunga National Park today remains embedded in one of the world’s most conflict-affected regions, and the tension between protection and the rights and needs of surrounding communities has never been fully resolved.
Read more
For more on this story, see: Virunga National Park — About
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Ghana establishes a marine protected area at Cape Three Points
- Uganda reintroduces rhinos to Kidepo Valley
- The Good News for Humankind archive on conservation
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