Black River Gorges National Park

The Black River Gorges National Park covers the largest remaining tract of native forest in Mauritius, protecting deep gorges, river valleys, and highland plateau in the island's mountainous southwest. The park is accessible from several points around the Chamarel area, with a network of trails ranging from easy riverside walks to full-day ridge traverses with significant elevation gain.

The most accessible entry for visitors based in Chamarel is the Chamarel viewpoint into the gorge, or the trails descending toward Black River itself on the western edge of the park. The park protects several Mauritius endemics that are now very rare — the Mauritius kestrel, the pink pigeon, the echo parakeet — and patient birders can spot them on the forest trails. The vegetation itself is remarkable: tree ferns, palms, and flowering endemic species that exist nowhere else on earth.

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The Black River Gorges is the last stronghold of the Mauritius flying fox, a large fruit bat with a wingspan approaching a metre. During mango and fig season you can sometimes see dozens of them hanging from the forest canopy, then launching themselves at dusk in slow, broad spirals over the gorge. They are a keystone species — without them pollinating and dispersing seeds, large sections of native forest could not regenerate.

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