Heritage
Black River Gorges National Park: Visitor and Heritage Guide
The last of the native forest of Mauritius, on 3.5 per cent of the island, holding species that exist nowhere else. On the Tentative List, not inscribed.
- Country Mauritius
- Category Heritage
- Reviewed 19 August 2026
- Sources 4
- Length 2 min read
Credit Lukas von Daeniken from Schweiz, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Black River Gorges National Park is not a World Heritage site. It was submitted to UNESCO's Tentative List in 2006 and is the only entry Mauritius has on that list, which is a fair measure of how much of the island's natural heritage is concentrated in it.
The park covers 6,574 hectares, about three and a half per cent of Mauritius. Inside that fraction are the vestiges of the native forest that once covered the whole island, and 163 of the 311 plant species found nowhere else on earth.
What was lost, and what was kept
Mauritius is the standing example of what happens to an island ecosystem after contact. The dodo is the emblem of it and is far from the whole of it: the forest was cleared for sugar, the introduced species arrived with the ships, and what remains is what could not easily be farmed.
The gorges could not easily be farmed. That is why the last forest is here, on steep ground in the southwest, and why the conservation work of the last half century has concentrated on it. The Mauritius kestrel, the pink pigeon and the echo parakeet all came back from the edge inside this park.
If you go
The plateau here is several hundred meters up and is cooler and wetter than the coast. Bring a layer even in summer.
- The main visitor centers are at Petrin in the north and Black River in the west.
- Entry to the park is free at the time of writing.
- Trails range from a short viewpoint walk to a full day across the gorges.
- Carry water. There is none on the trails and the humidity is deceptive.
- Leeches are common after rain and are harmless.
- The Alexandra Falls and Gorges viewpoints are reachable by car.
What Tentative List status means
A Tentative List is a country's own inventory of what it may nominate in future. It confers no protection and no status. It is a statement of intent, and reading one is often the clearest published account of why a country believes a place matters.
Mauritius's single entry says that the island's remaining natural heritage is essentially this park. That is a striking thing for a state party to put in writing, and it is worth knowing before you decide whether to spend a day here.
A note on the name
UNESCO's own Tentative List page spells the park Black River Georges. It is a typo on their side, repeated in their database. The park is Black River Gorges, named for the gorges, and this page uses the correct spelling while citing the page that does not.
Sources
- UNESCO Tentative List: Black River Gorges National Park
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Mauritius
- Accessible travel in Mauritius
- Mauritius destination guide
The submission year, area, the figure of 3.5 per cent of the island and the count of 163 of 311 endemic plant species were read from the UNESCO Tentative List entry for the park on 19 August 2026.