Mayumba National Park is a national park in southwestern Gabon. It is a thin tongue of beach, dunes, savanna, and rain-forest in the extreme south of the country, between Mayumba and the Congo border. Mayumba National Park shelters 60 km of the most important leatherback turtle nesting beaches on Earth and is home to unique coastal vegetation and a variety of terrestrial animals, including forest elephants, buffaloes, leopards, gorillas, chimpanzees, antelopes, crocodiles, hippos, and several species of monkeys. It also stretches for 15 km out to sea, protecting important marine habitats for dolphins, sharks, and migrating humpback whales.

 

It was Gabon's first marine park. Since then a network of 20 marine parks and aquatic reserves was created to protect 26 percent of Gabon’s territorial seas and it extend across 53,000 square kilometers. In creating the protected areas, Gabon's government also set up the most sustainable fisheries management plan for West Africa.