Virunga National Park spans 7800 square kilometers along the eastern border and holds the distinction of being Africa's oldest national park, established in 1925 by Belgian colonial authorities as Albert National Park. The park contains eight volcanoes in the Virunga Mountains chain, including Nyiragongo, which holds the world's largest permanent lava lake in its summit crater at 3470 meters elevation. The crater measures roughly 250 meters across and the lava lake has been active continuously since the major eruptions of 1977 and 2002, the latter destroying 14 percent of Goma's structures and displacing 350,000 people. Mountain gorillas inhabit the park's southern sectors around the dormant Mikeno volcano, with the most recent census by the Greater Virunga Transboundary Collaboration recording approximately 604 individuals across the entire Virunga Massif population in 2016, which spans into Uganda and Rwanda. Armed conflict between park rangers and various militia groups has resulted in over 200 ranger deaths since the park's establishment, with 17 rangers killed in April 2020 in a single ambush near the park headquarters at Rumangabo. The park infrastructure includes Mikeno Lodge and Bukima Tented Camp as primary accommodation points for gorilla trekking permits, which cost 400 US dollars per person as of the park authority's 2019 rate schedule, substantially lower than the 1500 dollar permits in neighboring Rwanda.
Kahuzi-Biéga National Park protects 6000 square kilometers of montane and lowland rainforest west of Bukavu and takes its name from Mount Kahuzi at 3308 meters and Mount Biéga at 2790 meters. The park became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980 specifically for its population of eastern lowland gorillas, a distinct subspecies from the mountain gorillas in Virunga. The park management reported approximately 181 eastern lowland gorillas in a 2018 census of the highland sector, though the lowland sector remains largely inaccessible due to occupation by Mai-Mai militia groups and illegal mining operations. Gold and coltan extraction within the park boundaries intensified following the Second Congo War from 1998 to 2003, with the Wildlife Conservation Society documenting over 4000 illegal miners in the park's lowland zone in their 2010 survey. Gorilla tracking here launches from the Tshivanga visitor center near Bukavu, where three habituated gorilla families receive tourists on permits priced at 400 dollars, matching Virunga's rate structure. The park recorded just 2370 visitors in 2019 according to their annual report, compared to over 20,000 visitors to mountain gorilla sites in neighboring countries during the same period.
The Congo River measures 4700 kilometers from its source in the highlands near Zambia to its Atlantic outlet, making it the second longest river in Africa after the Nile. The river's discharge averages 41,000 cubic meters per second at its mouth, the second highest flow rate globally after the Amazon. Navigation proceeds uninterrupted for 1700 kilometers between Kinshasa and Kisangani, forming the primary transportation corridor through the country's interior where road infrastructure remains minimal. Boyoma Falls near Kisangani consists of seven cataracts across 100 kilometers where the Lualaba River becomes the Congo River, dropping 61 meters total elevation. These falls marked the absolute limit of navigable water during the colonial era and Henry Morton Stanley documented them in his 1877 expedition journals under the name Stanley Falls. River transport between Kinshasa and Kisangani operates primarily through barges pushed by tugboats, with journey times ranging from two to three weeks upstream depending on water levels and mechanical reliability. The passenger vessels include both government-operated ONATRA barges and private operators, with travelers typically providing their own food for the multi-week journey and sleeping on deck or in rented cabins.
Salonga National Park encompasses 33,350 square kilometers of dense equatorial rainforest in the central Congo Basin, making it Africa's largest tropical rainforest park and the second-largest protected tropical forest globally after Tumucumaque in Brazil. The park exists as two separate blocks divided by a corridor roughly 45 kilometers wide, with no road access to either section. UNESCO designated Salonga as a World Heritage Site in 1984 for its biodiversity including bonobos, forest elephants, Congo peacocks, and false gharials. Accessing the park requires multi-day travel by pirogue along the Salonga River or its tributaries, with the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature maintaining minimal research station infrastructure at Monkoto in the northern block and Watsi Kengo in the southern block. No tourist facilities exist within the park boundaries. Commercial bushmeat hunting represents the primary threat according to the Wildlife Conservation Society's 2017 assessment, which documented hunting camps throughout the park despite its protected status. Bonobo populations in Salonga remain uncensored in their entirety due to the terrain and security constraints, though scientists estimate several thousand individuals remain based on extrapolations from sample transect surveys.