Maputo National Park

Maputo National Park is a national park in Mozambique, located on Maputo Bay, approximately 100 kilometers southeast of the city of Maputo. With an area of 1,718 km2 (663 square miles), it is part of Matutuíne District of the Maputo Province, and also of the Inhaca Island of the city of Maputo.

The park was created on 7 December 2021, by the merger of two pre-existing conservation areas: the Maputo Special Reserve (1,040 km2 (400 square miles)) and the Ponta do Ouro Partial Marine Reserve (678 km2 (262 square miles)). The Maputo Special Reserve (before 1969 known as Maputo Elephant Reserve) was originally proclaimed in 1932 as the Maputo Elephant Reserve to protect a small population of coastal elephants resident in the area. The park was devastated by the Mozambican Civil War, which decimated its animal population. In 2006, the government signed a memorandum of understanding with the South Africa-based conservation group Peace Parks Foundation to rehabilitate the park, resulting in the reintroduction of multiple species beginning in 2010. The Ponta do Ouro Partial Marine Reserve was established in 2009 to protect the coastal ecosystem of the southernmost region of Mozambique.

The park combines lakes, wetlands, swamp forests, grasslands and mangrove forests with a coastline that lies within the Maputaland Centre of Endemism.