Lobéké

Lobéké National Park was established in 2001 in south-eastern Cameroon, at the point where the borders with the Central African Republic and the Republic of the Congo converge, and protects some 2,178 km² of dense Congo Basin rainforest.

Its most characteristic feature is the bais: natural clearings within the forest, formed on mineral-rich soils, to which animals come to drink and to take in salts. Forest elephants, gorillas, buffalo and bongos gather in those clearings, and they are the only places where wildlife can be watched in an otherwise impenetrable forest; the Djangui bai is the best known in the park.

In 2012 Lobéké was inscribed on the World Heritage List as part of the Sangha Trinational, a serial property that also brings together Dzanga-Ndoki National Park, in the Central African Republic, and Nouabalé-Ndoki, in the Republic of the Congo. It is one of the few natural properties in the world shared by three countries and protects a continuous block of practically undisturbed Congo rainforest. The territory is inhabited by Baka communities, whose relationship with the forest and whose use rights are a central and far from untroubled issue in the park's management.