Awash National Park

Aside from its wildlife heritage, Awash National Park has some great features that are attractions in themselves.

The sedate journey of the Awash River comes to a turbulent and tumultuous end at the Awash River Falls inside the park. This beautiful waterfall is renowned for its thundering cascades and for the crocodiles basking on the rocks beneath it.

Mount Fantale, an extinct volcano, rises majestically over the surrounding lowland. With ancient fissures and a crater at its summit, it is a great piece of wilderness to explore on foot. There is a hyaena den on the south side of the mountain, and in the evenings you can watch the nocturnal predators walk into the park and its surrounds.

Established in 1966 as Ethiopia’s first officially gazetted national park, the area spans roughly 750 square kilometers across the floor of the Great Rift Valley. The landscape is dominated by dry Acacia-Commiphora woodlands, open savannah grasslands, and dense riverine forests along the banks of the Awash River. This mosaic of ecosystems harbors diverse mammalian species, including sizeable herds of East African Beisa oryx, Soemmerring’s gazelles, Salt’s dik-diks, and both lesser and greater kudus. Overlapping ranges of olive and Hamadryas baboons, along with predators such as caracals, servals, black-backed jackals, and occasional lions, also inhabit the interior plains

The park is equally recognized as a world-class birding location, with more than 450 recorded species spanning lowland savannah and aquatic habitats. Avian highlights include endemic and regional species such as the Kori bustard, Abyssinian roller, yellow-throated seedeater, and various species of hornbills, barbets, and birds of prey. Culturally and historically, the park boundaries intersect the traditional pastoral grounds of the Karrayyu, Itu, and Afar communities, whose heritage and livestock herding traditions have been deeply intertwined with the semi-arid Rift Valley environment for generations