The park
About Matusadona National Park: size, landscapes and trust
A national park on the southern shore of Lake Kariba in northern Zimbabwe, bounded by the lake to the north, the Ume River to the west and the Sanyati Gorge to the east. Three landscapes stack up from the water: lakeshore grassland, a valley floor of woodland and thicket, and the Zambezi escarpment.
If you only want the answer
Matusadona covers about 1,400 km² on the southern shore of Lake Kariba, in Kariba District, Mashonaland West. It became a national park in 1975 and since 2019 has been run by the Matusadona Conservation Trust, a partnership of African Parks and ZimParks. Headquarters are at Tashinga in the north-west. Bumi Hills, Musango and Tiger Bay lie outside the park, west of the Ume.
How big is it?
About 1,400 km². The figure you will see almost everywhere, including on African Parks' and ZimParks' own pages, is 1,470 km². The schedule to Zimbabwe's Parks and Wildlife Act gives 140,700 hectares, which is 1,407 km², and the park's management plan says the same in its text. 1,470 looks like a transposition of those digits that has been copied ever since.
The northern boundary also moves. When the lake recedes, the land between the high-water mark and the current water line becomes part of the park.
Who runs it
Since November 2019 the park has been managed by the Matusadona Conservation Trust, a joint venture between African Parks and the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority, under a 20-year agreement. It was African Parks' first park in Zimbabwe. The trust runs its own reservations office and sets its own conservation levy, which is why Matusadona's fees differ from the ZimParks gazette.
The park is also spelled Matusadonha in some ZimParks and African Parks documents. This guide is independent of both organisations and of the park's official website.
Three landscapes
The lakeshore grassland is where most of the game viewing happens. A torpedo grass that did not grow here before the dam covers ground that floods and drains with the lake, and its area swings between about 4,400 and 10,200 hectares depending on the water level. It is most extensive in the north-east, between the Kemurara mouth and Hydro Bay.
Behind it the valley floor, at about 490 m, is mopane, combretum and terminalia woodland with dense jesse thicket. Seasonal rivers such as the Gubu, Shenga, Chura, Jenje, Kanjedza, Nyamuni and Bonde hold seeps and springs, and the valley floor is widest in the west.
Above it all rises the Zambezi escarpment, miombo woodland up to about 1,300 m, cut deepest toward the Sanyati Gorge. The management plan notes that wildlife here has declined the most.
What is in the park, and what is not
Inside the park: Tashinga headquarters with its campsite, cottages and airstrip; the park's Jenje bush camp; the wilderness campsites; and two private lodges on leases from the trust, Changa Safari Camp in the north-east and Rhino Safari Camp on a peninsula on the north-western shore.
Outside it: Bumi Hills Safari Lodge sits on its own concession west of the Ume River, as do Musango Island and the Tiger Bay area up the Ume. Spurwing and Fothergill, on the Kariba side near the Sanyati, are counted by the management plan as outside the park and pay daily levies, although Fothergill describes itself as within it. Kariba town, the gateway, is across the lake.
People and neighbours
The southern boundary follows no natural line and borders the Omay communal land and the Gache-Gache and Kanyati hunting areas. The park sits at the eastern end of the Sebungwe region and on the eastern edge of the Kavango-Zambezi transfrontier area. Kings Camp, a legal fishing community, lies inside the park on the lakeshore 13 km north-east of Tashinga.
At night the lights you see out on the lake are kapenta rigs. They may not fish within 2 km of the shore or on the ten days around the full moon.
Is it a World Heritage Site?
No. You will occasionally see Matusadona described as one, but Zimbabwe's natural World Heritage Site in the Zambezi valley is Mana Pools National Park with the Sapi and Chewore Safari Areas, downstream of the dam.