Arabuko Sokoke Forest

Arabuko Sokoke is the largest and most intact coastal dry forest left in East Africa: roughly 420 square kilometres of continuous woodland standing behind the beaches at Watamu, entered from the highway at Gede. Most of the coastal forest that once ran from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique now survives as fragments of a few hundred hectares. This is what the belt used to look like.

BirdLife International has ranked it the second most important forest for bird conservation in mainland Africa. It holds six globally threatened bird species, three globally threatened mammals, and a set of animals that occur here and almost nowhere else on earth.

Why a Fragment This Size Matters

The coastal forests of eastern Africa are one of the world’s recognised biodiversity hotspots, corresponding roughly to what botanists call the Swahilian regional centre of endemism. Kenya’s own submission to the UNESCO tentative list counts them among 35 such hotspots globally; Friends of Arabuko-Sokoke Forest puts the number at 36. The disagreement is about how hotspots are counted rather than about this forest, and is noted so that a reader meeting both numbers knows neither is a misprint.

What is not in dispute is that Arabuko Sokoke is the largest surviving piece of it. The significance is as much about being unbroken as about being big. A Rocha Kenya’s conservation strategy for the neighbouring Dakatcha Woodland sets out the arithmetic of the wider ecoregion: of roughly 617,765 acres of coastal forest across it, Arabuko Sokoke protects about 91,430 acres and Shimba Hills about 47,445, and the strategy notes pointedly that Shimba Hills lacks most of the key threatened species. One forest is carrying a disproportionate share of what the ecoregion has left.

The Ground Underneath, and the Three Forests It Produces

The forest sits on two very different soils, and everything else follows from the boundary between them.

The relatively flat eastern section lies on Pleistocene lagoon sands and clays. The western part of the reserve sits on a ridge of red Magarini sands. Between the two runs a wide band of what appear to be riverine sandy deposits. The transition from the white soil to the red is abrupt, and it is marked on the ground by a chain of seasonal ponds, which is as clear a physical signpost as any forest offers.

Three vegetation types grow out of that geology, and the UNESCO submission gives areas for each.

• Mixed forest, about 7,000 hectares, in the east on grey sands. Relatively dense, tall and undifferentiated, with a diversity of tree species: Combretum schumannii, Drypetes reticulata, Afzelia quanzensis, Dialium orientale, Hymenaea verrucosa and Manilkara sansibarensis. Kenya Forest Service describes the feel of it as the closest thing here to being properly in the woods.
• Brachystegia woodland, about 7,700 hectares, running as a strip through the approximate centre of the forest on white, very infertile soil, dominated by Brachystegia spiciformis. This is miombo: open-canopied, airy and easy to walk. The open canopy is why birds and butterflies are far more visible here than anywhere else in the reserve.
• Cynometra forest and thicket, in the west on the red Magarini sands, dominated by Cynometra webberi alongside Manilkara sulcata, Oldfieldia somalensis and Brachylaena huillensis. It comes in three grades. Two blocks of relatively tall Cynometra forest with a canopy reaching about 20 metres, one of 3,300 hectares in the north and one of 6,000 in the south. A lower, scrubbier intermediate formation of about 11,300 hectares with a canopy of seven to eight metres. And in the dry north-west, about 2,300 hectares of low, dense, often almost impenetrable thicket with a canopy no more than five metres high.

Those figures are worth reading with one caveat. Added up they come to about 37,600 hectares, against a gazetted reserve of roughly 41,800. The submission does not explain the difference, and this page does not fill it in. The forest-type areas are given because they are the only published breakdown of what the reserve is actually made of; the shortfall is stated rather than quietly dropped.

Why the Mix Is What Produces the Endemism

Most writing about Arabuko Sokoke goes straight to the species list. That list only makes sense once the three forest types are in place, because almost every animal people come for is tied to one of them, and several to the rarest.

Cynometra thicket is the least accessible and the most important. It is where the Sokoke scops owl lives, and Cynometra webberi is specifically the vegetation the owl depends on. It is also where caracal, African civet, genet and suni turn up on the tracks, because dense low cover suits animals that do not want to be seen.

Brachystegia is the opposite: open, bright and comparatively easy. Clarke’s weaver flocks move through it, and it is the best of the three for butterflies. Hidden in it after rain are seasonal pools that fill with birds and amphibians and are worth asking a guide about specifically, because in a forest with very little standing water they concentrate everything.

Mixed forest in the east is where the golden-rumped sengi, the East Coast akalat and the tiny greenbul are most often found.

A visitor who drives one loop through one vegetation type and leaves has not seen Arabuko Sokoke. That is the practical consequence of the geology, and it is the reason a half day here is a sampler rather than a visit.

The Six Globally Threatened Birds

Start with the totals, because the two official figures do not agree. Kenya Forest Service records over 270 bird species in the reserve, around a fifth of Kenya’s entire list. The UNESCO tentative-list submission gives more than 230, including 25 of Kenya’s 30 African East Coast biome species. Both come from bodies with standing, and the gap is a reminder that a forest bird list is a running total that grows with observer effort rather than a measurement of anything.

Six species are globally threatened, and five of the seven species of the East African Coastal Forests Endemic Bird Area occur here.

• Clarke’s weaver. A Kenyan endemic known from two places on earth. Treated in full below, because the usual claim about it is wrong.
• Sokoke scops owl. Endangered, named for this forest, confined to Cynometra. Treated below.
• Sokoke pipit. A coastal-forest endemic, recorded in the Dakatcha Woodland as well as here.
• Amani sunbird. One of the coastal-forest specialists, strongly associated with Brachystegia.
• East Coast akalat. A skulking forest robin of the denser ground, most often met in mixed forest.
• Spotted ground thrush. A shy, scarce bird of the forest floor.

Beyond those six, the UNESCO submission lists further birds of conservation concern at the site: the southern banded snake eagle, Fischer’s turaco and the plain-backed sunbird, with Ayres’s hawk eagle, African crowned eagle, African pitta and scaly babbler recorded as regionally threatened. A Rocha separately notes the southern banded snake eagle as Near Threatened.

None of these is reliable on demand. A guide who says otherwise is selling something.

Clarke’s Weaver, and the Colony That Is Not Here

Clarke’s weaver is a Kenyan endemic known from only two places on earth: this forest and the Dakatcha Woodland, roughly thirty kilometres to the north. It does not, on the published record, breed here. The species was described in 1913 and its nesting site stayed unknown for a century. The first breeding colony ever recorded was found in March 2013 in the northern Dakatcha Woodlands north-west of Malindi, and published by Jackson, Ng’weno and colleagues in Scopus: Journal of East African Ornithology in 2015. An estimated four to five hundred nests were concentrated in one small wetland, coarsely woven with a low side entrance, built into the tops of tall sedges standing in water. Adults were displaying and nest-building on 23 March, feeding young by 7 April, and the colony had been abandoned by 19 April: breeding tightly synchronised and over in under a month.

A Rocha Kenya’s Dakatcha strategy describes the habitat that supports it as stands of Brachystegia spiciformis together with small seasonal rivers and wetlands, and Nature Kenya now holds a reserve of around 800 acres in Dakatcha specifically to protect that breeding ground.

Birds are seen in Arabuko Sokoke in flocks, often in the Brachystegia, and that is a feeding and roosting relationship rather than a breeding one. Pages asserting that the weaver breeds nowhere but Arabuko Sokoke have the right idea about how restricted the bird is and the wrong forest, and pages saying it is found nowhere else in the world leave out the half of its range where it actually nests.

The Sokoke Scops Owl and Its Three Forests

The owl is named for this forest and comes closer than almost any African bird to being confined to a single place. It is listed as Endangered.

Its world range is small enough to name completely, and the sources differ on how small. A Rocha Kenya, which monitors both Kenyan sites, records it as found only in the Dakatcha Woodland, Arabuko Sokoke and the East Usambaras of north-eastern Tanzania. The older UNESCO submission names only this forest and one site in north-east Tanzania, leaving Dakatcha out. The Tanzanian population sits in the adjoining Manga and Kwamgumi forest reserves; within Arabuko Sokoke the owl is tied to Cynometra and Brachylaena-dominated ground.

That habitat dependence is why finding one is a question of being in the right vegetation at the right hour rather than of walking further. It is also why the species is vulnerable to anything that thins Cynometra, and modelling work has suggested its suitable climate will shift southwards over this century.

The Mammals, Which Deserve More Attention Than They Get

Forty mammal species are recorded. Three are globally threatened, and all three are more distinctive than the bird list suggests.

The golden-rumped sengi is an Endangered forest elephant-shrew restricted to the coastal forests of Kenya, with its most important population here. It is a long-nosed, fast, day-active leaf-litter animal, and the eastern mixed forest is where visitors most often see one. A Rocha’s camera trapping recently confirmed its presence north of the Sabaki River for the first time, which gives some idea of how thinly the species has been documented.

Ader’s duiker is a tiny forest antelope recorded from Sokoke and Zanzibar and almost nowhere else. The Sokoke bushy-tailed mongoose, Bdeogale crassicauda omnivora, completes the trio.

Around two hundred African elephants live in the forest, along with buffalo, and a solar-powered elephant-proof fence running some 120 kilometres has been built around the reserve, which Friends of Arabuko-Sokoke Forest credits with removing the human-elephant conflict that previously ran along the boundary. African civet, caracal, Sykes’s monkey, yellow baboon and lesser galago are all present, and the UNESCO submission records that the African golden cat, rare in Kenya, may occur.

Forty-nine reptile and twenty-five amphibian species have been recorded. The green keel-bellied lizard, Gastropholis prasina, is the reptile to hope for, and the forest is exceptionally rich in amphibians, including coastal endemics such as Bunty’s dwarf toad. At least fifty plant taxa here are globally or nationally rare, and the butterfly checklist runs to 282 species, four of them endemic and six taxa endemic to the East African coast more widely, amounting to roughly a third of Kenya’s butterfly fauna.

Who Protects It, and the Park Nobody Can Find

Protection here is older and more layered than a single gazettement, and it does not sit with one agency. The published record also contradicts itself, so the divergences are given rather than smoothed over.

• Gazettement. The UNESCO submission records the forest as proclaimed a Crown Forest in 1932 and gazetted in 1943 at 39,100 hectares. Friends of Arabuko-Sokoke Forest says simply that it was gazetted in 1932. Both agree on the Kararacha extension of 2,700 hectares, added to the south-east in 1968, which brings the gazetted total to about 41,800 hectares and reconciles with the 420 square kilometre headline.
• The strict nature reserve. A core of 4,300 hectares, containing sections of all three habitat types, is separately protected. The UNESCO submission dates that to the late 1960s; secondary summaries of the forest’s own management plan give 1977.
• The biosphere reserve. UNESCO’s World Heritage documentation lists Arabuko Sokoke within the Malindi-Watamu Arabuko Sokoke Biosphere Reserve, designated in 1979. Friends of Arabuko-Sokoke Forest states instead that the forest joined the Man and the Biosphere programme in 2019. One may be a re-designation of the other; neither is asserted here as the whole story.

Day-to-day management, the gate and the ticket are Kenya Forest Service. The management plan for the forest, however, is a joint instrument, drawn up by a management team in which Kenya Wildlife Service, the National Museums of Kenya and the Kenya Forestry Research Institute sit alongside the forest service, the community forest associations and Friends of Arabuko-Sokoke Forest. Anyone told this is simply a forest service reserve has been given the half of it that applies at the entrance.

There is one loose end that this page cannot tie off. A separate Arabuko Sokoke National Park is widely reported to have been gazetted inside or beside the forest reserve in the late 1980s, which would put a portion of this ground under Kenya Wildlife Service rather than Kenya Forest Service. KWS publishes no page, no brochure and no sitemap entry for any such park, and both plausible page addresses return errors. The report may well be correct and the web presence simply absent, but nothing here asserts a park that its supposed manager does not list.

The Forest and the Villages Around It

Arabuko Sokoke is a conservation island in a populated landscape, and that shapes both the threats to it and the way a visitor should behave in it.

Friends of Arabuko-Sokoke Forest counts 54 villages directly adjacent to the reserve’s 120 kilometre perimeter, with a population of roughly 150,000 people, predominantly small-scale subsistence farmers who draw part of their livelihood from the forest. It puts poverty in that population at around 71.7 per cent and food insecurity as affecting about 67 per cent of households.

Those figures explain why guiding income matters, why the elephant fence was built, why community forest associations sit on the management team, and why the neighbouring Mida Creek boardwalk was set up to generate income for forest conservation and for the education of local children. Visitors are a small but real part of how the forest pays its way.

Visiting Arabuko Sokoke Forest

The reserve lies along the tarmac Mombasa to Malindi highway, roughly 100 kilometres from Mombasa and 18 kilometres from Malindi. The entrance is signposted at Gede and visitor services are at the Kenya Forest Service Malindi Forest Zone offices on the site. Mida Creek is less than a kilometre from the forest entrance and Gedi Ruins is on the same junction, so the three can be done on one very full day, though the forest alone justifies more.

Inside there is a network of marked walking trails and more than thirty kilometres of driving tracks crossing all three forest types. Two tree platforms give a view out across the canopy, and Nyari viewpoint sits on higher ground with a panorama over the forest towards the coast beyond. Driving is the efficient way to see the transitions between vegetation types; walking is the only way to learn anything. Forest walks, forest drives, birding, butterfly watching, cycling, running, picnicking and camping are all provided for.

Guides work from the entrance as members of the Arabuko Sokoke Forest Guides Association and charge according to time spent and service rendered, arranged at the point of entry. Going alone is permitted and close to pointless if the target species are the reason for the visit: the threatened birds are habitat-specific, several are nocturnal or crepuscular, and elephant and buffalo are in the forest.

Kenya Forest Service charges entry at the point of entry but publishes no tariff anywhere, directing enquirers to telephone the forest station for current rates. No figure is given on this page for that reason; confirm on arrival rather than trusting a number from a travel site. Tickets are sold between 6am and 6pm and can be bought the evening before, which is how a pre-dawn start is arranged.

Many tracks take a saloon car and four-wheel drive reaches the rest. The speed limit is 40kph. The posted rules are the ordinary ones and are worth following properly: give wildlife time to leave the track before passing, do not feed anything, light no fires, remove no animals, plants or parts of either, do not mark or deface trees, stones or other features, and keep the noise down. Carry water, binoculars, a hat and shoes you can walk in.

The wet seasons run April to June and November to December, and the rest of the year is usually hot and dry. The reserve is markedly wetter in the east than in the dry, scrubby north-west, though the two official sources differ on the size of the gradient: Kenya Forest Service gives about 1,000 millimetres a year in the east against 600 in the north-west, while the UNESCO submission gives 1,100 against 900. Best birding is from first light to about nine in the morning, with late afternoon second. See also the forest walks, birdwatching and cycling guides.

Questions Travellers Ask About Arabuko Sokoke