The Nyungwe National Park in Rwanda, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, harbours a highly diverse, species- and endemic-rich refugial area covered by montane rainforest. The park’s herpetological inventory remains incomplete, as evidenced by a steady stream of new discoveries. We provide an overview of the research history from the earliest expeditions to recent field work and make reference to the relevant literature. We present an updated annotated list of species recorded from the park. We report 34 species of amphibians and 50 species of reptiles from Nyungwe National Park in Rwanda. 59% of amphibian species and 34% reptile species are Albertine-Rift endemics, and three of the amphibian species are locally endemic to Nyungwe Forest. We characterize the three main altitudinal vegetation zones and allocate the amphibian and reptile species to their preferred altitudinal zone. A biogeographical assignment and the IUCN red list status of the species are given. We discuss the etymology of the forest names and other colloquial terms and describe traditional ideas about the forest and provide vernacular names.
Hinkel et al. (Thu,) studied this question.