Arabuko-Sokoke Forest
The last big coastal forest in East Africa, half an hour from the beach.
Muhtasari
Arabuko-Sokoke covers about 420 square kilometres inland from Watamu and Malindi and is the largest surviving fragment of the coastal forest that once ran the length of East Africa. What remains is disproportionately important: six globally threatened bird species live here, several of them almost nowhere else. The Sokoke scops owl is known from this forest and one site in north-east Tanzania. Clarke’s weaver feeds in the forest and breeds, as far as anyone has found, only in the seasonal wetlands of this coast. Amani sunbird, Sokoke pipit and East Coast akalat are all on the list, which is why birders fly to Malindi specifically. The forest also holds the golden-rumped elephant shrew — a rabbit-sized insectivore found only in these coastal forests, and the one mammal here that visitors see easily — along with Ader’s duiker, Sykes’s monkey and a resident elephant population.