The MAFOU classified forest is the truly protected area of the park: it is the ZIP (Fully Protected Area), surrounded by nearly 2,000 km² of buffer zones. Very sparsely populated, it extends over 550 km² including the Niger River and the left bank over a 1 km band.
Currently, there is only one track within the forest, connecting two branches of the park, namely Somoria and Sérékoroba (65km), and running along the Niger River. This aspect is an opportunity to discover very interesting sites, whether for vision tourism, animal tourism or socio-cultural tourism.