Mucusso National Park, National park in southeastern Angola.
Luengue-Luiana National Park, known as Mucusso, covers 42,000 km² in Cuando Province, southeastern Angola. It is bounded by the Kavango River to the west and southwest, the Namibian border to the south, the Cuando River to the east and Longa-Mavinga National Park to the north. Most of it is open Burkea, Baikiaea, Pterocarpus and Erythrophleum woodland over sparse grass on leached sandy soil, with papyrus-flooded grasslands 10–15 km wide along the Cuando.
The park was created on 29 December 2011 by National Assembly Decree No. 38/11, which proclaimed the Luengue-Luiana and Mavinga national parks. The new park absorbed the former Luiana and Mucusso reserves. During the colonial period hunting reserves (coutadas) had been established in the region, and the area saw little fighting in the 1961-1974 War of Independence but was fought over during the 1975-2002 Civil War, when thousands of land mines were laid.
The park's name comes from Mucusso, one of the two reserves (with Luiana) that were merged into Luengue-Luiana in 2011. The area was organised as coutadas, colonial-era hunting reserves, before becoming a protected zone. The park is managed by Angola's Ministry of Hotels and Tourism, and in September 2019 Prince Harry visited and spoke about clearing the land mines left from the civil war.
Visitors need to get permits from park authorities since the area has unmapped sections and ongoing mine-clearing work. It is important to have local guidance when moving through the park to stay safe.
The park adjoins Zambia's Sioma Ngwezi National Park across the Cuando River and Namibia's Bwabwata National Park to the south, within the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area spanning Angola, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe. In 2019, HALO Trust estimated 153 minefields remained in Luengue-Luiana and neighbouring Longa-Mavinga, and the government pledged $60 million to clear them by 2025.
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