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Malawi Tourism Attraction: All You Need to Know About Lake Malawi National Park in Malawi / Africa News

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Lakes are very important in human life. Over here in Africa, Malawi Lakes play a very significant and useful role in the peoples’ day to day activities.

In this edition of the NationalTurk Travel features on Africa, we seek to digest and bring to the attention of our cherish readers one of the great lakes in Africa which has transformed into a national wildlife park located in the Republic of Malawi.

Lake Malawi National Park, located at the southern end of the stretch of Lake Malawi in Cape Maclear in the district of Mangochi is the world’s first ever freshwater Park.

The primary objective for the creation of the park in the early 1980s was to protect fish and aquatic habitats but authorities later added a fair amount of land which includes several small islands in the Lake Malawi shores which serves as a habitat for some key terrestrial species.

The park, which covers some 94 km2, is composed of the Cape Maclear peninsula, three other disjunctive mainland areas, 12 islands and lake waters that lie within 100 m of the park’s terrestrial components. Total water area is estimated to be some 7 km2.

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The distinctive feature of the park is its deep and clear waters, mountain backdrop and a land area around the cape including the Lake’s islands which is up to 100 metres off shore.

The park is home to many hundreds of fish species, animal species and plants which is nearly all endemic in nature and only adapt to that particular area alone.

The breakdown of the fish species given by aqua culture experts stood at some 500-1000 different species of fishes are found and most of these fishes are found only in Lake Malawi.

Ninety percent 90% of these fishes are said to belong to the family called “Cichlid”, which include Utaka, Mbuna, Mcheni and many other kinds. It is thought that all of these 500 different cichlids have developed from the same origin for about two million (2,000,000) years ago.

The Lake itself is thought to be about three million (3,000,000 years old). The park and the Lake are said to be of global importance for biodiversity conservation because of its diversity in containing many living species.

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An adaptive radiation and speciation are particularly noteworthy in the small but brightly colored rocky-shore tilapiine cichlids known as rockfish but the locals call it mbuna. 350 species of mbuna are separately endemic to Lake Malawi and represented in the park as well.

Habitat types vary from rocky shorelines to sandy beaches and from wooded hillsides to swamps and lagoons. Granitic hills rise steeply from the lakeshore and there are a number of sandy bays including a fine beach in the Chembe-Otter Point area. Lake surface elevation is near 475 m, while the highest point on the peninsula is 1,140 m.

The historical large baobab tree which is believed to be over 800 years old is said to have been a favorite place of Dr. David Livingstone where he gave sermons ad interacted with other missionaries in ancient days. Dr. David Livingstone (19 March 1813 – 1 May 1873) was a Scottish Congregationalist pioneer medical missionary with the London Missionary Society and an explorer in Africa who settled in Malawi. Five of the early missionaries who died during Dr. Livingstone time graves are also said to be found in the park.

Another outstanding feature of the park worth mentioning in this article is that since a lot of water is kept closed inside the lake, the environment of the lake does not change easily and keeps a uniform weather condition throughout the year which is very conducive for many tourists.

Lac Malawi

In 1984, the park was added to the United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as a result of the many endemic fish species found in the park making it a key example of specialized evolution. Wildlife experts say the park is important for the study of evolution as compared to that of the finches of the Galapagos Islands on the Pacific Ocean. The Galapagos Islands are an archipelago of volcanic islands distributed on either side of the Equator in the Pacific Ocean, which is some 926 km west of Ecuador.

The place is an area of exceptional natural beauty with its islands and clear waters set against the background of the Great African Rift Valley escarpment.

There are five villages included within the enclaves of the park but effective utilization of park resources is highly restricted to curb the illegal harvesting of resources such as poaching, threats of rapid growth of human population, the impact of firewood collection, fish poaching and crowded fish landing sites.

A key management priority of the Malawian government under the auspices of the tourism sector in maintaining the lake’s ecosystem, amid considering the needs of the local community through collaborative management programmes that ensures that, the implementation of the Wildlife Policy that mandates park management to work in collaboration with local communities within and outside the park boundaries is a shared responsibility between the government and the local people within the area, and benefits accruing from the park is spread within the community for developmental projects to be executed in the small villages around.

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The park has a management plan which is a strategic tourism management plan for Malawi which describes the tourism development for the site and the country as a whole. The terrestrial and underwater habitats are in good condition and effective management is keeping the park running by improving the living condition of the various living species thereby, attracting more tourists and visitors all over the world to the park.

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There are good lots of guest houses, rest places and hotels to take care of visitors who visit the park all year round. Visiting Lake Malawi National Park is a journey of countless experience and will make you appreciate the beauty of nature in the Universe.

Issaka Adams / NationalTurk Africa Tourism News

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