Batéké Plateaux National Park is the great contrast of Gabon, a country almost entirely covered in rainforest. In its far south-east, right on the border with the Congo, an unexpected landscape unfolds: sandstone plateaus, rolling grassy savannahs, sandy valleys and rivers lined with narrow strips of gallery forest, a bright, open setting that feels more like southern Africa than the equatorial jungle. This is the Gabon almost nobody knows.
That geographical uniqueness comes with a fascinating natural history. These plateaus were the last refuge of the lion in Gabon, which died out here in the 1990s, until in 2015 a camera trap photographed a lone male, the last known lion in the country. That discovery gave momentum to an ambitious lion reintroduction project, the first of its kind in Central Africa, which aims to bring the big cat back to the Batéké savannahs, where it could live alongside forest elephants, gorillas and chimpanzees as nowhere else on the planet.
This guide explains what this remote and spectacular park is like, how to get there from Franceville and Léconi, what wildlife and landscapes to expect and what logistics you'll need. It isn't an easy or crowded destination: it takes time, a 4x4 and a spirit of adventure. But for travellers looking for the unusual, the Batéké Plateaux offer one of the most original experiences in Africa: savannah and plateaus in the heart of rainforest country, with the lion set to roar again.
The Batéké plateaus are an island of savannah in the vast sea of Central African rainforest, a landscape of sandstone and grass inhabited since ancient times by the Téké people, masters of savannah hunting. They were the last stronghold of the lion in Gabon and neighbouring Congo, until the species was considered extinct in the area around the mid-1990s; the discovery in 2015 of a lone male, the last known lion in the country, sparked a historic reintroduction project. Established as a national park in 2002 as part of Gabon's network of 13 parks, the Batéké Plateaux are today a laboratory for wildlife restoration and a unique landscape. The full story is told on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The Gabon beyond the rainforest: the grassy Batéké plateaux, the Poubara falls with their liana bridge, and Franceville, the town Brazza founded at the end of the Trans-Gabon line.
Read the history of The southeast: plateaux and waterfalls →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The Batéké Plateaux are a fascinating geographical anomaly. In the far south-east of Gabon, and stretching into the neighbouring Republic of the Congo, lies a vast expanse of sandstone plateaux covered in grassy savanna, sandy valleys and narrow strips of gallery forest along the rivers. It is a great island of savanna in the middle of the ocean of equatorial rainforest that dominates Central Africa, a bright, open landscape that surprises anyone who associates Gabon only with the jungle.
This unusual landscape is the product of geology and climate history. The plateaux sit on thick deposits of ancient sands and sandstones that are highly permeable, so water drains away quickly and trees struggle to take hold, which favours the savanna. On top of that, during the drier periods of the geological past, when the African rainforest shrank, these grasslands spread; today they are partly a relic of those climates, kept in place by the sandy soils, seasonal fires and the activity of wildlife.
The result is a transition ecosystem, where savanna and forest species and habitats meet. That frontier status, ecologically rare and valuable, is the key to what makes the Batéké Plateaux so distinctive: a place where the Congo's humid forest looks out over the southern savanna, creating a unique mosaic that supports a very particular biodiversity, different from that of the rest of Gabon.
The park is named after its ancestral inhabitants: the Batéké or Teke, a Bantu people who have lived on these plateaux for centuries and have shaped their culture around the savanna. Unlike other Gabonese peoples, adapted to the forest and the rivers, the Teke became experts in life on the grasslands: skilled hunters, cassava farmers on the sandy soils, and people who understood the cycles of fire and the wildlife of the savanna. Their territory lies on both sides of today's border between Gabon and the Congo.
The Teke are famous in African art for their flat, circular masks with geometric patterns and bright colours (the kidumu masks), for their statues of power figures loaded with ritual substances, and for their mastery of weaving plant fibres, a craft that produces works as astonishing as the liana bridges over the Ogooué, including the famous one at Poubara. Their history is also tied to the great Teke kingdoms that ruled part of the Congo Basin, which the first Europeans to reach the region dealt with.
This deep bond between the Teke people and the plateaux is part of what makes the land so valuable. Traditional knowledge of the savanna, hunting and fire shaped this landscape for centuries, and Teke communities still live around the park. The conservation of the Batéké Plateaux cannot be understood without them: protecting the nature of the plateaux also means respecting and working with the people who have lived on them and known them for generations.
For thousands of years, the savannas of the Batéké plateaux were home to grassland wildlife that was unusual in the forested heart of Central Africa, including its top predator: the lion. These grasslands were the lion's northernmost and westernmost stronghold in this part of the continent, an enclave where the king of the savanna survived far from the great plains of East and Southern Africa. But over the course of the 20th century, hunting, the decline of its prey and human pressure steadily wiped out its population.
By the mid-1990s, the lion was considered extirpated from Gabon and from the border region with the Congo: the big cat seemed to have vanished from the Batéké plateaux for good. It was a symbolic blow, the loss of a flagship species in one of its last refuges in Central Africa. For two decades, the Batéké savannas had no top predator, and the lion became little more than a memory and a story told by the elders.
Then, in 2015, the unexpected happened: a camera trap set up in the park photographed a lone male lion, the last known lion in Gabon. The image shook the conservation world. That animal, probably arriving from the neighbouring Congo, showed that the plateau habitat could still support the big cat and that the door to its return was not completely closed. That discovery sparked one of the most ambitious conservation projects in Central Africa.
The discovery of Gabon's last lion in 2015 gave momentum to a historic project: the first reintroduction of lions in West and Central Africa. Organisations specialising in big cats, such as Panthera, working with Gabon's Agence Nationale des Parcs Nationaux (ANPN) and other partners, began studying whether it would be feasible to bring lions back to the Batéké savannas. The goal is as bold as it is symbolic: to restore a locally extinct top predator in a unique landscape where the lion could live alongside forest species.
The project includes studying the habitat and prey populations (antelopes, buffalo and other savanna grazers), building acclimatisation enclosures for future lions and careful work with local communities to make sure people, livestock and big cats can coexist. It is a complex, long-term effort that moves forward step by step: in 2023, the construction of a specialised release enclosure in the park was reported, a milestone towards the goal of seeing lions on the plateaux again.
The Batéké Plateaux offer an exceptional opportunity for this: they may be the only place on the planet where lions could share their home with Congo rainforest wildlife, such as forest elephants, lowland gorillas and chimpanzees, alongside savanna species. That uniqueness was joined by other good news on the recovery front, such as the return of the spotted hyena, documented by camera traps after two decades of absence. The park thus became a laboratory for wildlife restoration and a symbol of hope for conservation in Central Africa.
Formal protection for the Batéké plateaux came in 2002, when President Omar Bongo created Gabon's network of 13 national parks, placing about 11% of the country's territory under protection. Batéké Plateau National Park, covering some 2,050 km², was created to safeguard this unique savanna and forest ecosystem in the far south-east, and it is managed by the ANPN. Its creation recognised that this landscape, so different from the rest of Gabon, deserved to be preserved both for its natural value and for its distinctive wildlife.
The park is part of a larger whole: the Batéké plateaux continue across the border into the Republic of the Congo, where there are protected areas such as the Léfini reserve, forming a vast cross-border savanna ecosystem. Protecting this territory effectively requires regional cooperation, since wildlife (and future lions) needs wide spaces that ignore political borders. Efforts to expand and connect the protected areas aim precisely to secure the long-term viability of this ecosystem.
Today, the Batéké Plateaux are still a remote and little-visited destination, but one of extraordinary value: a landscape of savanna and plateau that breaks every cliché about Gabon, a laboratory for wildlife restoration with the lion as its emblem, and the ancestral home of the Teke people. From the lion's last refuge to the stage for its possible return, from a forgotten savanna to a national park, the Batéké plateaux embody one of the most exciting conservation stories in Africa and one of the most unexpected and fascinating sides of Gabon.
