Travel: St Catherine's National Park

Al Ahram Weekly

Objective: The basis of the national park's rationale is the conservation of biological diversity or biodiversity. This phenomenon has increased over geological time, the world's biodiversity is richer now than at any time in its evolutionary history. At the same time, global biological diversity is being lost at a rate many times faster than ever before, largely as a result of human activities.

Geographical aspects: St Catherine's National Park occupies much of the central part of South Sinai, a mountainous region of Precambrian igneous and metamorphic rock, which includes Egypt's highest peaks (St Catherine's Mountain, Mount Moses, Serbal mountain, Um Shomer mountain and Tarbush mountain).

St Catherine's Mountain is the highest peak in Egypt, 2,629 m above sea-level. The Sinai massif contains some of the world's oldest rocks. Around 80 per cent of the rocks are 600 million years old.

Management: Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency.

Importance: The St Catherine National Park is an area of great biological interest and includes the highest mountains in Egypt. This high altitude ecosystem supports a surprising diversity of wild species; some found nowhere else in the world. The mountains are relic outposts for the Sinai rose finch from Asia, the ibex and wolf from Europe, and the striped hyena and Tristram's grackle which came from Africa. Several species are unique to the National Park including two species of snakes and about 20 plant species, such as a beautiful native primrose.