WORLDKINGS – Worldkings News – Africa Records Institute (AFRI) – Karoo National Park: House world’s greatest number of tortoise species

The Karoo National Park, founded in 1979, is a wildlife reserve in the Great Karoo area of the Western Cape, South Africa near Beaufort West.

This semi-desert area covers an area of 750 square kilometres (290 sq mi). The Nuweveld portion of the Great Escarpment runs through the Park. It is therefore partly in the Lower Karoo, at about 850 m above sea level, and partly in the Upper Karoo at over 1300 m altitude.

The Karoo National Park is a sanctuary for herds of springbok, gemsbok (or Oryx), Cape mountain zebra, Cape buffalo, red hartebeest, black rhinoceros, eland, kudu, klipspringer, bat-eared foxes, black-backed jackal, ostriches, and, since fairly recently, lions. It also has the greatest number of tortoise species of any park in the world – five in total. They are: the leopard tortoise (South Africa’s largest tortoise species and the most likely to be seen here), the tent tortoise, the tiny Karoo dwarf tortoise (which only occurs in the Great Karoo), the angulate tortoise, and the Greater Karoo tortoise.

According to en.wikipedia & roxannereid.co.za