Ecosystem and Relict Cultural Landscape of Lopé-Okanda

Where dense rainforest gives way abruptly to relict savannah, Lopé-Okanda preserves both a rare ecological frontier and a deep human record. Its forests shelter endangered great mammals, while hilltops, caves and shelters hold traces of successive peoples — iron-working sites and some 1,800 rock carvings — that mark an ancient migration route of Bantu and other peoples along the Ogooué valley. UNESCO inscribed this mixed cultural and natural site in Gabon as a World Heritage Site in 2007.