Kéran National Park

Oti-Kéran National Park
Parc National de la Oti-Kéran
IUCN category II (national park)
Location within Togo
Location	Savannes Region, Togo
Coordinates	10°08′N 0°37′E / 10.13°N 0.62°E / 10.13; 0.62Coordinates: 10°08′N 0°37′E / 10.13°N 0.62°E / 10.13; 0.62
Area	69,000 ha (270 sq mi)
Established	1950

Oti-Kéran National Park is located in the north of Togo, in the Kara area. There is only one road going through this area. Not many tourists visit Togo as the main national parks are more accessible in Ghana.

The Oti-Kéran National Park belongs to a network of nature reserves in northern Togo that has been originally considerably expanded since the 1960s. These actions were undertaken without consent and participation of the local population. Instead of gaining income from tourism and other business opportunities potentially linked to the national parks, people were removed from their land and agricultural developments were abandoned, resulting in an increase of poverty and even hunger. Additionally, wildlife - especially elephants - from the protected but not fenced areas caused damage to fields and crops in the surrounding communities. This led to antipathy by the local population against the protected areas and the wildlife. During political turmoil in 1990 this hatred broke free by massive attacks against the protected areas and mass-slaughtering of animals, resulting in a major destruction of the environment.

As a result of widespread destruction and human invasion into the protected areas, Togolese authorities reformed the park boundaries since 1999. Peripheral areas deemed too much destroyed to be re-naturalized have been excluded from the national park and officially deallocated for human development. This shrunk the size of the national park, now named the Oti-Kéran National Park, from 179550 to 69000 hectars. What remained is planned to form part of a future biosphere reserve, linked by the Oti-Mandouri National Park to the WAP (W, Arli, Pendjari) protected area system in Burkina Faso, Benin, and Niger. It is, however, still threatened by settlements, cotton-farming, charcoal production, and other human activities within the park boundaries.