Baluran

Baluran National Park was established in 1980 at the north-eastern tip of Java, in the regency of Situbondo, and covers some 250 km² around the Baluran volcano, now dormant, which rises to some 1,247 metres.

It is popularly known as "the Africa of Java" for its landscape: a broad open savannah of grasses dotted with acacias, entirely unlike the rainforest that characterises the rest of the island. The cause is climatic, with a long, marked dry season, and also historical, since grazing and recurrent fires have kept the ground open. The Bekol savannah, the heart of the park, offers in the dry season views of herds grazing with the volcano's cone behind them that explain the nickname.

Its fauna includes the banteng, the rusa deer, the crab-eating macaque, the green peafowl and an abundant birdlife, and along the coast there are mangroves and reefs. The main conservation problem is the invasion of the thorny acacia Vachellia nilotica, introduced in the 1970s as a firebreak, which has been closing in the savannah and reducing the grazing available to the herbivores; eradicating it is one of the management priorities. Since 2016 the park has formed part of the Blambangan Biosphere Reserve.