Virunga National Park (N/1979) The park of Virunga offers within its 790,000 hectares an incomparable diversity of habitats, from swamps and steppes to the snow fields of Rwenzori at an altitude of over 5,000 metres, and from the lava plains to the savannahs on the slopes of volcanoes. Some 20,000 hippopotamuses live in its rivers, mountain gorillas find refuge there and birds from Siberia spend the winter there.