Wadi El Gamal National Park was created in 2003 to protect some of the delicate marine and desert ecosystems in southern Egypt. It encompasses 2,880 sq miles (7,450 sq km) of coastal beach and mangroves, shallow coral reefs and inland mountainous desert, all rich in native and migrant species.
It offers protection to a range of endangered animals – the Nubian ibex, Egyptian vulture and dugongs, to name some of the more well-known.
The Park is remote, relatively unknown and rarely visited, and it’s home to an ancient community of Ababda Beduins, who live their lives following age-old traditions. In its mountains can be found prehistoric wall art, ruins from the Egyptian Ptolemaic era and Roman remains.
Ras Hankorab Beach
In the coastal region, Ras Hankorab Beach in particular is a place of great beauty and biodiversity that has been variously nicknamed ‘Paradise Lagoon’ and ‘the Egyptian Maldives’. The coral reefs of the area contain around 450 different types of coral and more than 1,200 types of fish.
Importantly, the nearby extensive sections of mangrove forests and small offshore islands host many nesting bird species, including African spoonbills, Caspian terns, striated herons and Western Reef Herons. The beaches are nesting sites for green turtles and the seagrass beds in the shallow waters feed and shelter endangered dugongs.
However, the beauty, biodiversity and unique habitats of not only Hankorab but also the whole of Wadi El Gamal National Park came under threat at the beginning of 2025 from an unauthorised building development destined to comprise of a luxury hotel complex.
Hankorab’s soft sand and turquoise waters, which these illegal developers have earmarked, have ranked it among the top 25 beaches in the world by TripAdvisor, which is the obvious attraction to a commercial business.
Protecting delicate habitats
When the National Park was established, Wadi El Gamal was designated a Category II area by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). This means it is managed in a way that contributes to local economies and allows educational and recreational tourism, so long as it is on a scale that will not reduce the effectiveness of conservation efforts.
In line with this, Hankorab’s protected area has seen a rise in ecotourism in recently years, with visiting divers and day visitors, but it has been carefully controlled by the local people to minimise disturbance to the biosphere. An unregulated development of multiple modern buildings with all their associated infrastructure requirements and crowds of year-round visitors would overwhelm such a delicate natural environment, putting at risk all the animal species that depend on it.
And these creatures will not be the only casualties of such an incursion into the natural area. Many local people, living, working and caring for the land and sea in traditional ways, benefit from the income they make from ecotourism, and a modern development would wipe out that way of living as well.
Far from authority
The remoteness of Wadi El Gamal is its misfortune when it comes to preventing a deliberate trespass on the protected land. It stretches for many miles along the Red Sea coast road towards the Sundanese border, 45km south of the nearest big town, Marsa Alam, and 520 miles, or nearly 10 hours’ drive, from the Ministry of Environment and the Environmental Affairs Agency in Cairo, making effective policing very difficult.
Local police from Marsa Alam have now twice removed people encroaching on the Hankorab Beach area with excavators, only for them to return shortly after. The Egyptian press has also published strongly worded reports on the threat to Hankorab Beach and the knock-on effect it could have on the whole region if a precedent is set with the illegal building. And there have been many comments on TripAdvisor and social media from visitors who are dismayed to see signs of digging work being done.
Environmentalists and the local community hope that raising the profile of the uniqueness and importance of the whole of Wadi El Gamal, and especially Hankorab Beach, will make the area a less attractive proposition for developers.
