The park is the largest block of intact lowland forest in the Congo Basin and it is accessible only by water or air. It is part of the Salonga Landscape, which extends over an area of 104,205km² and is one of the 12 priority landscapes of the Congo Basin Forests Partnership (CBFP). 

Biodiversity
Salonga is home to a rich biodiversity, including forest elephants, bonobos, bongos, giant pangolins, and the indigenous Congo peacock.
Despite the park’s enormous size and apparent inaccessibility, and the fact that it has been largely untouched by civil wars and security issues, wildlife populations have been hit hard during the past two decades. Several large navigable rivers provide access deep into the park. On the one hand, the needs of the human population in the immediate area, coupled with the huge demand for food in urban centres as far as Kinshasa, have driven bushmeat hunting and fishing in Salonga to critical levels. On the other hand, elephant poaching has in recent years once more become a highly lucrative business, prompted by the skyrocketing ivory prices on international markets.
Insufficient management capacity, corruption, and the virtual lack of infrastructure have made it extremely difficult for park authorities and their partners to efficiently tackle these challenges.
Since 1999, Salonga is on the list of World Heritage Sites in Danger. However thanks to the efforts of Congolese Insitute for Nature Conservation (ICCN), the WWF and their partners, in July 2021 Salonga was removed from the list of Heritage sites in Danger.

People
Salonga National Park is composed of two blocks (North and South) separated by the 45 km-wide Monkoto corridor. This is where a large number of people who resided within the park perimeter before its creation in 1970 were subsequently resettled. 
The density of human populations on the periphery of the park is relatively low: it is estimated to be at most 3 inhabitants per km². The landscape is populated mainly by the Mongo, who are one of the largest ethnic groups in the country, represented by the subgroups Nkundo, Ndengese, Yaelima, and Isolu. Other groups include the Mbole and the Twa pygmies.
Despite the relatively low human population density, villages are still located within 50 km of the park boundaries, with main concentrations in the urban centres of Oshwe, Dekese, Boende, Inongo, Bokungu and Monkoto.

Since 2015, WWF is co-managing Salonga National Park with ICCN (Congolese Institute for Nature Conservation). They are working to protect the park by reducing poaching and illegal trade in protected species, strengthening law enforcement, while improving the livelihoods of people around Salonga.

In the Salonga National Park, WWF-DRC is strengthening the management of the park to protect its rich biodiversity and ecosystems, for example by developing the capacity of employees to better manage the park, combating poaching more effectively, scientifically monitoring its biodiversity and building the necessary infrastructure.

Around the park, the programme works with communities to improve socio-economic benefits, for example by creating community forests, improving agricultural practices to increase and diversify food production along different value chains (rice, cassava, groundnuts, palm oil, rubber); increasing the quantity of marketable goods involving the private sector.