Qualla: Outamba-Kilimi National Park

Outamba-Kilimi National Park: Introduction

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Leasmhar, CC BY-SA 3.0. Some mornings at Outamba-Kilimi, a troop of green monkeys will commute across the breakfast table while you eat, swinging through the simple riverside huts as if the guests were the curiosity. This is Sierra Leone's wild north, where tall-grass savanna gives way to ribbons of forest along the rivers, and where the country protects some of the last West African chimpanzees. Two separate blocks of land, named for a mountain and a river, hold a country's worth of wildlife near the Guinea frontier.

Image: Leasmhar | CC BY-SA 3.0

Outamba-Kilimi National Park: A Park in Two Halves

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Leasmhar, CC BY-SA 3.0. Outamba-Kilimi spreads across the Karene District in north-west Sierra Leone, hard against the border with Guinea. It is really two parks joined under one name: Outamba, the larger block at 741 square kilometers, and Kilimi, at 368. Each carries the name of its defining feature, ...

Image: Leasmhar | CC BY-SA 3.0

Outamba-Kilimi National Park: Where Savanna Meets Forest

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Leasmhar, CC BY-SA 3.0. The genius of this landscape is its variety. Outamba is country of tall-grass savanna and woodland, stitched through with patches of closed-canopy forest; Kilimi opens into more spacious savanna woodland. Both hide pockets of raffia palm swamp forest and riverine grassland along ...

Image: Leasmhar | CC BY-SA 3.0

Outamba-Kilimi National Park: The Susu and the Land

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Leasmhar, CC BY-SA 3.0. People belong to this story as much as the chimpanzees do. The Susu, also spelled Soso, live in and around the park, and most of its staff are Susu. When the boundaries were drawn, some villages found themselves inside protected land, and most agreed to move to the surrounding bu...

Image: Leasmhar | CC BY-SA 3.0

Outamba-Kilimi National Park: Living on the Edge

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Leasmhar, CC BY-SA 3.0. Around the park runs a one-kilometer buffer zone, where most of the villages sit and the rules relax. Here hunting is permitted, except for protected species; farming continues; and stands of fast-growing gmelina trees have been planted to supply the firewood, furniture, and buil...

Image: Leasmhar | CC BY-SA 3.0