Important warning: this guide describes Kahuzi-Biega National Park for reference, but the park lies in South Kivu, in the east of the DR Congo, a province in armed conflict. In early 2025, the escalation by the M23 rebel group reached Bukavu, the gateway city to the park, and many governments advise against all travel to the region. A visit depends entirely on a highly volatile security situation. Before considering any trip, you must check the park's status and the official travel advice. With that warning up front, it's worth getting to know a place that is unique on the planet.
Kahuzi-Biega National Park is the only place in the world where, under normal conditions, you can see Grauer's gorilla up close. Also known as the eastern lowland gorilla, it is the largest of all gorilla subspecies, a forest giant that lives only in the east of the DR Congo. Unlike the mountain gorilla of Virunga, Grauer's gorilla is hard to see anywhere else, which makes Kahuzi-Biega an exceptional destination for great ape lovers. The park protects one of the last populations of this critically endangered species.
A World Heritage Site since 1980, the park covers a vast and varied territory, from the montane forests around the extinct Kahuzi and Biega volcanoes to extensive lowland forests to the west, with extraordinary biodiversity. But, like the whole of the eastern Congo, it has suffered enormously from war, poaching and illegal mining, and it is on the List of World Heritage in Danger. This guide explains what makes Kahuzi-Biega unique and what visiting it was like, always with the warning that access today depends on the region's difficult security situation.
Kahuzi-Biega National Park was created in 1970 by the Belgian conservationist Adrien Deschryver, with the core aim of protecting Grauer's gorilla, and was extended in 1975 to include the lowland forests. In 1980 it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The wars in the eastern Congo since the 1990s hit it hard (poaching, coltan mining, armed groups), and since 1997 it has been on the List of World Heritage in Danger. The Indigenous Twa people, evicted from the park when it was created, claim their ancestral land. The full story is on our dedicated page.
Read the full history ↓The mountainous east is home to the mountain gorillas of Virunga, the lava lake of Nyiragongo and the Great Lakes. It is also an area of active armed conflict, so always check the official travel advice.
Read the history of The east: the Kivus, the volcanoes and the Great Lakes →A local guide tells you in half an hour what no sign at the site will ever explain. We look ours up on Civitatis: guided in Spanish and booked online with no fuss. They have 7 activities in Kigali. And there are free tours here: you book without paying and tip the guide whatever you think at the end, so trying one costs you nothing. Have a look below: tap any of them to see them all.
They depart from Kigali, 144 km away. If you book from this link we earn a commission and you pay no more.
No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Kahuzi-Biega National Park was born in 1970 thanks to the determination of one man: Adrien Deschryver, a Belgian conservationist born in the Congo who devoted his life to protecting the gorillas of this mountainous region in the east of the country. Deschryver was captivated by the Grauer's gorillas living in the forests around Mount Kahuzi and Mount Biega, two extinct volcanoes, and fought to create a protected area that would save them from hunting and deforestation. The park was formally established that year, with gorilla conservation as its central mission.
One of Deschryver's great achievements was starting the process of habituating some groups of Grauer's gorillas to human presence. It was pioneering, delicate, long-term work that, over the years, would let visitors approach them safely and respectfully. That habituation made Kahuzi-Biega the best place in the world to see this subspecies, the largest of all gorillas.
In 1975, the park was greatly expanded to the west, taking in vast lowland forests and multiplying its area to around 6.000 km². With that, Kahuzi-Biega came to protect a territory of exceptional diversity, stretching from mountain summits to lowland rainforest, with chimpanzees, forest elephants and extraordinary biological richness. In 1980, UNESCO recognised that unique value by declaring it a World Heritage Site.
The star of the park is Grauer's gorilla (Gorilla beringei graueri), also known as the eastern lowland gorilla. It is the largest of all gorilla subspecies and therefore the largest primate in the world: adult males, with their distinctive silver backs, can weigh more than 200 kilos. It is named after the Austrian zoologist Rudolf Grauer, who described it in the early 20th century. It is endemic to the east of the DR Congo: it lives in no other country on the planet.
Unlike the mountain gorilla — better known and also found in Rwanda and Uganda — Grauer's gorilla lives in the mountain and lowland forests of eastern Congo, and conserving it is especially difficult because its range overlaps with one of the most unstable and violent regions in Africa. It is an intelligent, social ape that lives in groups led by a dominant male, feeds mainly on vegetation and plays a key role in the forest ecosystem.
Its situation is critical. Conservation studies have estimated that the Grauer's gorilla population collapsed dramatically over recent decades, with declines that some analyses put at around 70-80 %, due to poaching — often linked to illegal mining camps — habitat loss and the chaos of war. Kahuzi-Biega protects one of its last significant populations, which makes the park a decisive stronghold for the survival of the species.
The creation of the park had a painful and often overlooked side: the displacement of the Indigenous Twa (or Batwa) people, hunter-gatherers who had lived in these forests for generations and whose culture was closely bound to the forest. When the protected area was established in 1970 and expanded in 1975, the Twa were evicted from their ancestral lands with almost no compensation or alternatives, and were left to live on the margins, in poverty and uprooted.
Stripped of their territory and their traditional way of life, many Twa fell into marginalisation, discrimination and destitution. Over the decades, their demand for recognition of their rights and for access to their ancestral land grew ever firmer, and in some cases led to serious tensions and clashes in and around the park, with episodes of violence and repression that have been denounced by human rights organisations.
The story of the Twa of Kahuzi-Biega embodies a global conservation dilemma: how to protect nature without trampling the rights of the Indigenous peoples who lived in it and looked after it. It is a live and complex debate, with no easy answers, that is an inseparable part of the park's history and that calls for a fairer view of conservation, one that includes human communities and not just wildlife.
Like the whole of eastern Congo, Kahuzi-Biega was ravaged by the wars that broke out from 1996 onwards. The arrival of refugees, the movement of armies and armed groups and the collapse of the state turned the park into a scene of enormous devastation. Poaching soared: forest elephants were slaughtered almost to the point of disappearing from the park, and many gorillas were killed. The rangers, poorly equipped, kept working in extreme and dangerous conditions.
On top of the war came illegal mining. Eastern Congo is extremely rich in strategic minerals, especially coltan (columbite-tantalite), essential for mobile phones and electronics worldwide. During the years of conflict, prospectors and armed groups moved into the park to exploit deposits, setting up illegal camps whose occupants fed themselves by hunting wildlife, including gorillas. In this way, global demand for minerals became tragically linked to the destruction of this natural sanctuary.
Faced with such decline, UNESCO placed Kahuzi-Biega on the List of World Heritage in Danger as early as 1997, a status it has kept for decades. Despite everything, thanks to the tenacity of Congolese conservationists and rangers and to international support, the park managed to preserve key populations of Grauer's gorillas and to keep operating during windows of relative calm, a remarkable achievement in the face of adversity.
During periods of relative stability, Kahuzi-Biega managed to build small-scale but highly valuable gorilla tourism: travellers from all over the world came to Bukavu to walk through the forest and experience a unique encounter with Grauer's gorillas, bringing income for conservation and for local communities. The park earned an international reputation as the place on the planet to see this species, and its rangers and scientists did admirable work monitoring and protecting it.
However, peace in eastern Congo has never lasted. South Kivu province, where the park is located, has continued to be shaken by the activity of numerous armed groups. In early 2025, the major offensive by the M23 rebel group across the east of the country also reached Bukavu, the gateway city to the park, amid the region's worst security crisis in years. The instability once again put the protection of the park and the viability of any visit in jeopardy.
For travellers, Kahuzi-Biega is today a promise held back by reality: one of the most extraordinary places on the planet to see the largest of the gorillas, but located in a region whose security is uncertain and which governments advise against visiting. The advice is clear: follow developments in the conflict closely, always be guided by official travel advisories and by the status of the park, and hope that peace will one day make it possible to walk these forests again towards the Grauer's gorillas, whose survival depends to a large extent on this sanctuary holding out.
