Lag Badana National Park

Lag Badana, also known as Bushbush, was the first national park declared in Somalia and remains its flagship protected area. It covers some 3,340 km² at the country's southern tip, in the Lower Juba region, next to the Kenyan border, and reaches the shore of the Indian Ocean. It adjoins the Boni National Reserve on Kenyan territory, with which it forms a cross-border ecological corridor of forest, savannah, mangrove and marine ecosystems.

The park was created in the second half of the 1980s, when the Ministry of Tourism under Siad Barre's government planned to build the country's tourism industry around it, including the nearby reefs and islands. New legislation on national parks, game reserves and special reserves was drafted in 1989, with enforcement entrusted to the Wildlife Department of the National Range Agency. The outbreak of civil war in 1991 halted the park's development entirely; in 2014 the government announced an initiative to revive its management.

Its natural value is high: it is the Somali anchor of the East African coastal forests biodiversity hotspot. More than 200 vascular plant species have been recorded, some twenty of them endemic, and the park preserves intact mangroves, ancient dunes, tropical savannah and an all but pristine stretch of coast. It shelters rare antelopes such as the lesser kudu and Salt's dik-dik, as well as a significant share of the lion habitat Somalia has left, within an internationally recognised Lion Conservation Unit. It is also listed as an Important Bird Area for its migratory waders and forest specialists.