Dinder National Park

Dinder National Park (DNP) location in eastern Sudan.

Dinder National Park is a national park and biosphere reserve in eastern Sudan, on the Sudanese border with Ethiopia.

It is approximately 400 kilometers southeast of Khartoum. It was established as a park in 1935 and designated in 1979 as a member of the World Network of Biosphere Reserves.

Ecology

Dinder National Park is ecologically significant because it falls on the ecotone between the Sahel and Ethiopian Highlands ecoregions.
It contains three distinct ecosystems:

• riverine - riparian zone
• woodland
• maya (oxbow lake).

The park is home to 27 species of large mammals, over 160 species of birds, 32 species of fish, and small mammals, bats, reptiles, and amphibians. It is in a major flyway used by birds migrating between Eurasia and Africa.

Threats

The ecology of the park is threatened by encroachment from cattle herders who are being displaced from their traditional grazing lands by the expansion of crop agriculture, through the fundamental cause of expanding regional population.

Dinder National Park has been a habitat of the Painted Hunting Dog, Lycaon pictus, but this endangered canid has had a decline in its numbers in this region.

External links

• Adil Mohamed Ali and Mutasim Bashir Nimir, "Sustainable Use of Natural Resources in the Dinder National Park (Biosphere Reserve)", Fifth World Parks Conference, 2003; includes maps.
• Encyclopædia Britannica entry
• Lycaon pictus - the Painted Hunting Dog