Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park

The wildlife park includes tall riverine forest with palm trees, miombo woodland and grassland with plenty of birds, and animals including Angolan giraffe, Burchell's zebra, warthog, sable, Cape buffalo, impala and other antelope. Animal numbers fell in droughts over the last two decades. The park actually has ten rhinos now with the latest calf being only a month and two weeks. The park before then contained two southern white rhino which are not indigenous and were imported from South Africa - they were both poached during the night of June 6, 2007. One was shot dead and got its horn extracted, not far from the gate and the other received serious bullet wounds but has triumphed against all odds and still lives in the park under twenty four hours surveillance. As of June, 2009 the number of southern white rhino in the park has been increased to five animals with plans to introduce further animals in due course.[5] The indigenous (black rhino) was believed extinct in Zambia but has recently been reintroduced in a pilot area) north luanwa national park. African elephants are often seen in the park when they cross the river in the dry season from the Zimbabwean side. Hippopotamus and crocodile can be seen from the river bank. Vervet monkeys and baboons are common as they are in the rest of the national park outside the wildlife section.[4] As of January 2009 the commercial wildlife company, Lion Encounter, has been operating a "walking with Lions" experience within the park, with further plans to start a breeding program for lions within the soon to be expanded Dambwa Forest section of the park.[6] Within the wildlife park is the Old Drift cemetery where the first European settlers were buried. They made camp by the river, but kept succumbing to a strange and fatal illness. They blamed the yellow/green-barked "fever trees" for this incurable malady, while all the time it was the malarial mosquito causing their demise. Before long the community moved to higher ground and the town of Livingstone emerged.[7]

The Falls section of the national park includes the rainforest on the cliff opposite the Eastern Cataract which is sustained by spray from the falls. It contains plants rare for the area such as pod mahogany, ebony, ivory palm, wild date palm and a number of creepers and lianas. Small antelopes and warthogs inhabit this area, and may also be seen in on the paths through the riverine forest leading to the falls.[4]

In November 2005 a new statue of explorer David Livingstone was erected in the park (the original and more famous Livingstone statue is on the Zimbabwean side). A plaque was also unveiled on Livingstone Island to mark the spot from where Livingstone was the first European to see the falls.[8]

The Knife-Edge Bridge was constructed in this area in the 1960s to enable access on foot to the cliffs looking over the Rainbow Falls and the First Gorge's exit to the Boiling Pot in the Second Gorge. A steep footpath also goes down to the Boiling Pot, with views of the Second Gorge and the Victoria Falls Bridge.[3]

In the area directly before the river plunges over Victoria Falls, there is a small undeveloped stretch of the park which is currently the only riverfront location that can be accessed without paying a fee. It is a crucial location for elephants to cross the river.[7]

The tops of the deep gorges below the falls can be reached by road and walking tracks through the park and are good places to see klipspringers, clawless otters and 35 species of raptors such as the Taita falcon, black eagle, peregrine falcon and augur buzzard, which all breed there.[4]

This park is considered for inclusion in the five-nation Kavango - Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area.

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