{"id":263,"date":"2012-06-29T14:25:08","date_gmt":"2012-06-29T14:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cires.colorado.edu\/blogs\/zambia\/?p=263"},"modified":"2014-06-05T21:26:38","modified_gmt":"2014-06-05T21:26:38","slug":"kasanka-national-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/zambia\/2012\/06\/29\/kasanka-national-park\/","title":{"rendered":"Kasanka National Park"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>We had a great chance to stay at Kasanka National Park for almost a week!\u00a0 Kasanka National Park is one of the smallest national parks in Zambia.\u00a0 It is protected by a private organization called the Kasanka Trust.\u00a0 This park is known for a large number of antelopes called puku as well as an extremely rare antelope called a sitatunga.\u00a0 Every November millions of straw-colored fruit bats fly to the park to mate and eat the abundant fruit.\u00a0 Kasanka is still recovering from heavy poaching in the 1970s and 1980s.\u00a0 Poaching is when people come into the park and hunt illegally.\u00a0 It is very difficult to control poaching, even in small parks, because no organization can watch all parts of the park at all times.\u00a0 Kasanka is home to many animals including baboons, elephant, buffalo, zebra, hippo, and others.\u00a0 In fact, one night we were sleeping in tents and a large group of elephant actually game right through our camp!\u00a0 As I was laying\"\"<\/a> in my tent sleeping I could hear them snapping branches and I could even hear their stomachs rumbling!\u00a0 Another night from where we were camping we could hear hippo in the river.\u00a0 Also, one day as we were walking, the resident ecologist at Kasanka spotted a small snout at the surface of the water.\u00a0 When he went down to investigate he discovered it was a 10 foot long python.\u00a0 He was able to catch it (with some help) and we all got to hold it together!\u00a0 Kasanka uses fire as a management tool.\u00a0 They try to burn grasses in the park during the early dry season to avoid fires coming into the park from the outside during the late dry season.\u00a0 Late dry season fires tend to burn hotter and longer than the early dry season fires.\u00a0 Late dry season fires can destroy forests and completely change ecosystems.\u00a0 These fires are usually set by poachers or farmers.\u00a0 To protect this park and the animals inside it there must be cooperation between Kasanka and the surround villagers.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We had a great chance to stay at Kasanka National Park for almost a week!\u00a0 Kasanka National Park is one of the smallest national parks in Zambia.\u00a0 It is protected by a private organization called the Kasanka Trust.\u00a0 This park is known for a large number of antelopes called puku as well as an extremely… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-01 02:42:26","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/zambia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/zambia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/zambia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/zambia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/zambia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/zambia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":295,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/zambia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263\/revisions\/295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/zambia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/zambia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/zambia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}