For many, Odzala-Kokoua National Park is the best place on the planet to see western lowland gorillas and immerse yourself in the deep rainforest of the Congo Basin. Its 13.500 km² of primary forest, swampy clearings and savannah are home to one of Africa's largest gorilla populations, along with forest elephants, buffalo, bongos, chimpanzees and hundreds of bird species. It is a remote, wild and extremely exclusive destination, far from the crowds of the East African safaris.
What makes Odzala unique are its 'bais': forest clearings with mineral-rich soils, crossed by streams, where wildlife comes out of the forest to feed. From platforms, or wading waist-deep through the water, you can see forest elephants, red buffalo, sitatungas and flocks of African grey parrots. And in the Ngaga forest you track gorilla families habituated by researchers, in one of the most intimate great-ape encounters the continent has to offer.
This guide explains how a visit to Odzala works —a park you can only explore with the ecotourism operator Kamba and its three luxury camps—, what wildlife and which bais you can see, how much it costs, when to go and how to fly in from Brazzaville. It is neither a cheap nor an improvised trip, but it is one of the great nature experiences still left in Africa, in the green heart of the continent.
Created in 1935, Odzala-Kokoua is one of the oldest protected areas in Africa. It began as a reserve during the French colonial era, was declared a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1977 and joined the World Heritage list in 2023. After years of poaching and the terrible impact of Ebola on its gorillas at the start of this century, the NGO African Parks took over its management in 2010 under a long-term agreement, and the park became a model of conservation and top-end ecotourism in the middle of the Congolese rainforest. Its full story is told on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The deep Congo: the immense equatorial rainforest of the Congo Basin, with Odzala-Kokoua and Nouabalé-Ndoki, 'the last Eden', where lowland gorillas and forest elephants gather in the swampy clearings known as bais.
Read the history of The northern rainforest and the great parks →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Odzala is a park with a long history by African standards. It was created in 1935, when the Congo was part of French Equatorial Africa, which makes it one of the oldest protected areas on the continent. In those years, the French colonial administration began marking out hunting and wildlife reserves in the vast northern rainforest, a practically unexplored territory covered in primary forest and home to Baka hunter-gatherer peoples and Bantu riverside communities.
The name 'Odzala' comes from the region and its local wildlife; over the years, the park's expansion towards the Kokoua massif added that second place name, and the whole area came to be called Odzala-Kokoua. The heart of the park is a huge stretch of Congo Basin rainforest, the second-largest tropical rainforest in the world after the Amazon, crossed by dark-water rivers and dotted with 'bais', the swampy clearings that are the key to its wealth of wildlife.
For decades it was a remote, little-visited park, better known to scientists than to travellers. Its wildlife — gorillas, forest elephants, buffalo, bongos — lived almost cut off from the world, in one of the most inaccessible corners of Central Africa.
Odzala's natural value gained international recognition over the course of the 20th century. In 1977, Unesco declared it a Biosphere Reserve under its 'Man and the Biosphere' programme, a label that recognised both its exceptional biodiversity and the need to reconcile conservation with human communities. The park was gradually enlarged to its current size of around 13.500 km², protecting a mosaic of dense rainforest, Marantaceae forests, savannahs and wetlands.
Odzala became famous in the scientific world for its western lowland gorillas. The dense thickets of herbaceous plants in the understorey provide abundant food that supports some of the highest gorilla densities on the planet; there was talk of tens of thousands of individuals in the region. Add to that the forest elephants — a species now critically endangered —, red buffalo, elusive bongos and extraordinary birdlife, with the African grey parrot as its emblem.
That richness made the park a reference point for studies on the ecology of the Congo rainforest, the lives of great apes and how bais work: true mineral oases where the forest's wildlife comes out into the open.
In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Odzala went through its darkest period. Between 2001 and 2005, the north of the Congo and neighbouring Gabon suffered devastating outbreaks of the Ebola virus, which not only hit human populations but also caused catastrophic die-offs among gorillas and chimpanzees. Ebola is estimated to have killed thousands of great apes in the area, with population drops of up to 90 % in some sectors. It was one of the worst disasters for gorilla conservation ever documented.
At the same time, poaching for ivory and bushmeat threatened forest elephants and other species. Weak surveillance, remoteness and regional conflicts made it hard to effectively protect such a large and isolated park. Odzala's wildlife, which had survived almost untouched for centuries, suddenly found itself under enormous pressure.
These blows made it clear that protecting Odzala required resources, staff and long-term management that the State alone could hardly sustain in such an isolated area. The solution would come through a partnership with an organisation specialising in managing African parks.
In 2010, the Government of the Republic of the Congo signed a long-term management agreement with African Parks, an NGO that specialises in running protected areas across the continent with a focus on conservation and sustainability. Since then, African Parks has been in charge of protection, anti-poaching patrols, research and tourism development in Odzala, working with the authorities and local communities.
The change was remarkable. Ranger teams and anti-poaching efforts were strengthened, gorilla and elephant populations recovered, and the park bet on a very high-end ecotourism model — low impact, high value — that helps fund conservation and creates local jobs. That model took shape in the luxury rainforest camps run by the tourism concessionaire Congo Conservation Company, now Kamba African Rainforest Experiences, which opened Odzala to the world as one of Africa's great gorilla destinations.
Work with neighbouring communities — jobs, health, education, a share in tourism revenue — became a central part of the strategy, aiming for the people of the region to see more value in a living park than in exploiting it.
Odzala's international recognition peaked in 2023, when the park was inscribed on the Unesco World Heritage List for its outstanding natural value: the integrity of its Congo Basin rainforest, its role as a refuge for lowland gorillas and forest elephants, and the uniqueness of its bais. It is a label that strengthens the park's protection and its profile as a conservation destination.
The challenges, however, have not gone away. Elephant poaching for ivory remains a latent threat across the whole Congo Basin; pressure from logging, mining and oil extraction lurks on the borders of protected areas; and climate change is altering the rainforest's cycles. Keeping these threats at bay demands constant vigilance, funding and the commitment of local communities.
Today Odzala-Kokoua is at once a scientific sanctuary, a model of managed conservation and one of the most exclusive nature experiences on the planet. From the colonial park of 1935 to the World Heritage Site of 2023, its story sums up that of conservation in Central Africa: a fragile natural treasure, battered but resilient, that survives thanks to the joint efforts of scientists, rangers, NGOs and the people who live in the green heart of the Congo.
