How large is Komodo National Park, including its surrounding sea?

Komodo National Park covers 173,300 hectares, including land and surrounding waters, and is administered within West Manggarai Regency, East Nusa Tenggara. The area is therefore substantially larger than the islands where visitors see Komodo dragons: its official boundary includes a marine component that is central to the park’s legal and ecological scope.

How large is Komodo National Park?

The park’s established area is 173,300 hectares, according to the Directorate General of Conservation of Natural Resources and Ecosystems, Ministry of Environment and Forestry, in its publication on the park’s history. The figure comes from Forestry Minister Decree No. 306/Kpts-II/1995, dated 26 June 1995.

The same ministry source describes the park as a group of islands and surrounding sea between Flores in East Nusa Tenggara and Sumbawa in West Nusa Tenggara. Its administrative government area is West Manggarai Regency.

Does the figure include the sea?

Yes. The ministry’s park-history publication gives the overall area as 173,300 hectares, while its description identifies both islands and marine waters as part of the national park. The figure should therefore not be read as land area alone.

A separate ministry conservation atlas records the park’s components as 40,728 hectares of land and 132,572 hectares of waters, according to the Ministry of Environment and Forestry’s Coral Reef Monitoring Atlas, published in 2011. Those components total the established park area reported in the ministry’s historical account.

Where is the park administered?

Komodo National Park is administratively part of West Manggarai Regency, according to the ministry’s park-history publication. Labuan Bajo is the regency capital and the main urban gateway to the park, but the park’s formal area extends across islands and marine waters rather than being confined to the town or a single island.

West Manggarai’s total land area is 3,141.47 square kilometres, and its projected population was 270,917 in 2023, according to the Central Statistics Agency of West Manggarai in West Manggarai in Figures 2025. Those are regency statistics, not measurements of the national park itself.

Why do official figures sometimes look different?

Figures can differ when a source reports the park’s total established area, land-only area, water area or a later zoning breakdown. For example, the Directorate General’s 2021 conservation statistics list a zoning structure that includes 34,304.00 hectares of core zone, 22,192.28 hectares of wilderness zone, 2,408.00 hectares of utilisation zone and 36,308.00 hectares of marine-protection zone.

Those zoning figures describe management categories and should not be substituted for the park’s headline established area of 173,300 hectares. The relevant unit and year matter whenever official park numbers are compared.

Sources

• Directorate General
• BPS-Statistics Indonesia, West Manggarai Regency