Country/territory: Angola
IBA criteria met: A1, A2, A3 (2001)
For more information about IBA criteria, please click here
Area: 1,000 hectares (10 km2)
Site description (2001 baseline)
Calandula was formerly known as Duque de Bragança and the Quedas de Calandula (the Duque de Bragança falls) are an important tourist attraction. The site lies on the Lucala river, about 55 km north-west of the town of Malanje and within the 1,200 mm isohyet. The vegetation is diverse, with gallery forests along the river and miombo woodland in the surrounding area. Trees along the Lucala river include Piptadeniastrum, Chlorophora, Ceiba and Xylopia species, while the miombo contains all the elements of climax miombo vegetation in Angola, dominated by Brachystegia and Julbernardia species.
Key biodiversity
See Box and Tables 2 and 3 for key species. The avifauna is rich (180 species collected), with a diversity of forest and woodland species (many known in Angola only from this site) and the area is fairly well explored. The site is important for species of the Afrotropical Highlands, Zambezian and Guinea–Congo Forests biomes that are not found elsewhere in Angola, particularly Cossypha heinrichi, a rare species of restricted range. This species also occurs at localities in DR Congo (Harrison 1977);(Keith et al., 1992), and its distribution defines the West DR Congo and north Angola forests Secondary Area (s044).
Non-bird biodiversity: Mammals include Panthera leo (VU) (Cabral 1987; Cabral and Simões 1988), and a diversity of small primates and small forest antelope are likely to occur.
Recommended citation
BirdLife International (2024) Important Bird Area factsheet: Calandula (Quedas de Calandula) (Angola). Downloaded from
https://datazone.birdlife.org/site/factsheet/calandula-(quedas-de-calandula)-iba-angola on 10/12/2024.