Located on Kenya’s coast, 110 kilometers north of Mombasa, the Arabuko Sokoke Forest Reserve is a national forest reserve protected by the Kenyan government. The Arabuko Sokoke National Park, located on the north-western boundary of the Arabuko Sokoke Forest Reserve and is only a few square kilometers in size, contains only a small section of the latter and is therefore designated as a national park.
Since its establishment in the late 1980s, the National Park has straddled the Forest Reserve line. Approximately half of its area is beyond the reserve’s boundaries. Although this park area is outside of an electric elephant fence constructed in 2006/7, it is now wholly populated by local populations to the point where no visible indication on the ground as to where the National Park begins or ends. The National Park does not provide any additional protection to the forest, the largest remnant of coastal forest (420 square kilometers) left in East Africa and the most extensive section of coastal forest globally.
Alternatively, the Forest Reserve is jointly administered by the Kenya Forest Service, the Kenya Wildlife Service, the Kenya Forest Research Institute, and the National Museums of Kenya. It is one of Kenya’s better-protected forests, ranking among the best in the country. The forest was first preserved as a Crown Forest in 1943, and it was gazetted as a national monument in the 1960s. The forest is threatened by local people’s thirst for land, putting their lives in danger. Many national and international conservation organizations collaborate with the Kenya Wildlife Service to save the park’s biodiversity.
Wildlife
The Arabuko Sokoke Forest, a diverse range of indigenous mammals, birds, and plants, is a high-endemism habitat. It has three forest types: mixed forest, Brachystegia forest, and Cynometra forest, each of which protects a different community of plants and animals than the others.
It protects a large number of endemic and near-endemic species. It is only in this forest that Clarke’s weaver can be found, as well as a forest fragment in Tanzania, where the namesake Sokoke scops owl can be found, as can the Sokoke pipit, as well as the Amani Sunbird and spotted ground thrush, which is all endemic to the forest. A mangrove forest, which borders the park and serves as an essential wintering home for shorebirds such as the Terek sandpiper and crab plover, can be found nearby Mida Creek, State Park.
There are three endemic mammals in the park: the Sokoke bushy-tailed mongoose, Aders’s duiker (which can only be found here and in Zanzibar), and the charming golden-rumped elephant shrew, which is the size of a rabbit and an indigenous elephant shrew the size of a rabbit. The forest is also home to savannah elephants, African civets, sokokes, baboons, and vervet monkeys, among other animals. In addition, the park is recognized as a world-class center of amphibian variety.