[1][2][3][4] Taï National Park is approximately 100 kilometers (62 mi) from the Ivorian coast on the border with Liberia between the Cavalla and Sassandra rivers.

[6] The park consists of 4,540 square kilometers (1,750 sq mi) of tropical evergreen forest located at the south-western corner of Ivory Coast, bordering Liberia.

The park is situated on a Precambrian granite peneplain of migmatites, biotites and gneiss which slopes down from the gently undulating drier north to more deeply dissected land in the south where the rainfall is heavy.

This plateau at between 150 and 200 meters (490 and 660 ft) is broken by several granite inselbergs formed from plutonic intrusions, including the Mont Niénokoué in the southwest.

In 1986, Ivory Coast suffered a 30% rainfall deficit, possibly due to loss of forest cover: 90% of the country has been deforested in the past fifty years resulting in greatly diminished evapotranspiration.

[7] The park is one of the last remaining portions of the vast primary Upper Guinean rain forest that once stretched across present-day Togo, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia and Sierra Leone to Guinea-Bissau.

The vegetation is predominantly dense evergreen ombrophilous forest of Upper Guinean type of 40–60 m emergent trees with massive trunks and large buttresses or stilt roots.

Large numbers of epiphytes and lianes form an important element at the lower levels including Platycerium, Nephrolepis biserrata, Drymaria and Asplenium africanum.

Tarrietia utilis), with numerous endemic species, especially in the lower Cavally Valley and the Meno and Hana depressions near Mont Niénokoué.

The dwarf or pygmy hippopotamus (Hexaprotodon liberiensis) numbered at around 500 in the park in 1996, and it is one of the few viable populations remaining [citation needed].

There are 143 species typical of primary forest, including African crowned eagle, lesser kestrel, white-breasted guineafowl, rufous fishing owl, brown-cheeked hornbill, yellow-casqued hornbill, western wattled cuckooshrike, rufous-winged thrush-babbler, green-tailed bristlebill, yellow-throated olive greenbul, black-capped rufous-warbler, Nimba flycatcher, Sierra Leone prinia, Lagden's bushshrike, copper-tailed glossy-starling, white-necked rockfowl, and Gola malimbe.

At least 56 species of amphibians are known from the park;[11] these include a true toad Amietophrynus taiensis and a reed frog found only in 1997 (Hyperolius nienokouensis), both only known from Ivory Coast.

Evidently, there was little settlement in the area before the late 1960s, when reservoir construction in the N'Zo valley and, later, drought in the Sahel, pushed people southwards.

Of the three main groups of farmers, the rural Bakoué and Kroumen cleared forest selectively, sparing medicinal trees; by contrast the Baoulé, in addition to the incomers who include refugees displaced by the dam on the N'Zo river, from the Sahel and from the conflicts in both Liberia and Ivory Coast who now form 90% of the population, have indiscriminately fragmented and destroyed much of the forest in the buffer zone.

[14] The park was the site of a UNESCO Man & Biosphere project on the effects of human interference within the natural forest ecosystem.

International scientific cooperation was exemplified by the Ivoirian, French, Italian, German and Swiss teams which worked together on various research programs.

In 1984, a Dutch team surveyed the area, using an ultra-light aircraft for low altitude photography to identify dying trees for use as timber.

There is also a Biosphere Reserve station 18 km south-east of Taï village, which consists of several prefabricated houses, a communal kitchen, two well-equipped laboratories, and an electric generator.

Between 1993 and 2002, the Project Autonome pour la Conservation du Parc National de Taï (PACPNT), financed by GTZ, KfW and the WWF, with the Parks Department (Direction des Parcs Nationaux et Réserves (DPN)), worked to improve management and surveillance, monitored and inventoried the condition of the flora and fauna, launched pilot conservation projects with local people, and made comparative studies of seven species of monkeys.

This project has produced over 50 papers covering subjects such as tool-using and the ebola virus in chimpanzees and the fauna as a potential source of foods and medicines.