Ancient Waters, Unique Landscapes

Rich biodiversity and landscapes

The NSAS has surprisingly rich landscapes, habitats and species (biodiversity). These include unique and dynamic groundwater-dependent ecosystems such as oases and desert lakes.

For example, Libya’s Kufra Group is a widely dispersed group of oases in unconnected shallow depressions where eagles and ostriches can be found.

In Egypt’s Farafra region, high quality products abound including olives, bananas, mangoes, and guavas. In northern Chad, the Tibesti Mountains are home to large numbers of species adapted to arid conditions, many of which are found in other regions of the Sahara. These include the scimitar-horned oryx, gazelle, barbary sheep, cheetah, hook-billed blind snake, desert locust, and white-spotted gecko.

In northwest Sudan, the Wadi Howar National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most remarkable natural features of the southeast Sahara Desert. With an area of 100,000 sq km, it is also one of the largest national parks in the world with diverse flora and outstanding geological features including the volcanic and crater landscape of Meidob Hills, gazelle, barbary sheep, and ostrich. Thousands of years ago, the Wadi Howar was the Nile’s largest tributary from the Sahara.

During the 1930s in Egypt, the Gilf Kebir Plateau was explored by the famous Hungarian desert explorer Count Laszlo de Almasy, chief character of the film The English Patient, who discovered several vegetated canyons he professed as Zarzora, the Lost Oasis. Later, scientists reported the landscape there as similar to that on Mars and one of the driest regions on Earth.

In the Libyan Desert, the Great Sand Seas of Rabyanah were created by huge volumes of sand excavated by the wind from the Quattara and other lesser depressions. Organised into a huge area of parallel sand dunes, they can be hundreds of kilometres in length, occasionally reach heights of a hundred metres, and host sand vipers and scorpions.