Ormanya was declared in 2011 and covers 189 hectares at the Kocaeli end of Lake Sapanca. Its ground is well suited to walking: closed-canopy forest of tall oaks, with views opening towards the lake, and wild animals can be watched in their own habitat.
The provincial directorate makes a large claim for it — that it is the third largest natural habitat area in the world and the largest in Europe. What it does describe is the model: the protection of wild life and day-use visiting brought together on one site. The turning is signposted at the Uzuntarla quarter on the İzmit-Sakarya D-100 road. It has capacity for 1,500 visitors.
The park is laid out in five parts: a children's zoo, a natural habitat area, walking and cycling trails, a wildlife rehabilitation centre and a nature school. The habitat area carries the idea. Rather than animals shown in pens, red deer, roe deer, fallow deer, feral horses and gazelles live in enclosures made to resemble their own ground, and visitors watch them from a distance. The children's zoo is the livelier corner, with farm animals next to alpacas, llamas, zebras, wallabies and lemurs, and a pond and a country restaurant where parents can sit while children play.
Inside the grounds the Kocaeli wildlife rescue and rehabilitation centre takes in weakened, orphaned, sick and injured wild animals, treats them and returns them to the wild. The woodland is mostly oak, with hornbeam, beech and lime above an understorey of strawberry tree, bramble, heather, medlar, bracken and cornelian cherry. Woodpeckers, nightingales, goldfinches, quail, sparrowhawks and buzzards are among its birds, and hares, jackals, foxes, wild boar, martens, badgers and squirrels among its mammals.
- Designated
- 11.07.2011
Visiting hours
- Visiting hours
- 09:00 - 18:00
When to go
- Climate
- Across Kocaeli as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 6.3 °C in January to 24 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June, July, August, September and October; rainfall is heaviest in December (108 mm) and lightest in August (42 mm). Long-term means for 1929-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
