Amani Nature Forest Reserve: East Usambara Rainforest

What Amani is

Amani is the most biologically important piece of forest in the Usambara Mountains, and one of the most important in Africa. It sits in the East Usambaras in Tanga Region, low and wet, catching moisture coming in off the Indian Ocean, and it holds a concentration of species found nowhere else that a Tropical Biology Association field guide to the reserve compares to the Galápagos.

People come here for birds, plants, amphibians, butterflies and the forest itself. Nobody comes here for big game. If that distinction appeals, Amani is one of the great destinations in Tanzania and hardly anybody visits it.

The reserve, and how it came to exist

Amani Nature Reserve was created by the Forests (Amani Nature Reserve) (Declaration) Order of 1997, which amalgamated six existing forest reserves — Amani East, Amani West, Amani-Sigi, Kwamkoro, Kwamsambia and Mnyusi Scarp — into a single protected block in Muheza and Korogwe districts.

The order gives the reserve’s approximate area as 8,380 hectares, or 83.80 square kilometres, and places it approximately 18 kilometres north-west of Muheza township. The Tropical Biology Association guide gives 8,360 hectares; the two figures differ by a rounding, and both are cited here rather than choosing one. The reserve was also declared a Man and the Biosphere Reserve.

Two details in the legal text are worth knowing because they explain what you see on the ground. First, 1,065 hectares of the reserve were covenanted to the Chief Conservator for nature conservation by the East Usambara Tea Company and Karimjee Agricultural Limited — the tea estates you drive through are part of the reserve’s story rather than an intrusion into it. The Tropical Biology Association gives this donated area as 1,068 hectares. Second, the order excludes two enclaves totalling 2,241 hectares: there are people living inside the reserve’s outline, and their land is not part of it.

The forest

Amani spans roughly 190 to 1,130 metres above sea level and covers the catchment of the Sigi River, with submontane forest higher up, lowland forest below and plantation forest in between. It is the largest single block of forest left in the East Usambaras, connected to the blocks north of it only by the Derema corridor, which runs across public land rather than protected land. The East Usambaras as a whole comprise thirteen forest blocks with roughly 45,137 hectares of natural forest remaining.

Mean annual rainfall is around 1,910 millimetres. Mean maximum temperature is 24.1 degrees and mean minimum 16.3 — warm, humid and very wet by Tanzanian standards, which is exactly why the forest is here.

Around 3,450 species of vascular plant have been recorded in the Usambaras, of which over a quarter are likely to be endemic or near-endemic. The animals that draw specialists include the Usambara eagle-owl and viviparous forest toads, which give birth to live young rather than laying eggs — a genuinely unusual trait among amphibians, and one of the things the Eastern Arc is known for scientifically.

The botanical garden, and the problem it left

Amani is not a pristine forest and its managers do not pretend otherwise. The Amani Botanical Garden was established by the German administration in 1902 as an extensive arboretum of long-term trial plots, into which species were introduced from around the world for agricultural testing — medicinal plants, spices and fruits, timber, rubber, fibre, oil and ornamentals. The British closed it in 1950. Many of the plots are now derelict and have naturalised into the surrounding forest.

The consequence is the reserve’s single largest conservation headache: alien species introduced through the garden, of which the aggressive spread of Maesopsis eminii is the standard case study. The garden has a gazetted area of 244 hectares, with a further 106 hectares outside legal protection, and responsibility for it is split between the Ministry of Agriculture, the Tanzania Forestry Research Institute and the National Institute for Medical Research — which complicates management accordingly.

Walking through a century-old failed botanical experiment that is now part of the ecosystem is, for a certain kind of visitor, the most interesting thing at Amani.

Amani Hill and a long scientific history

The hill has been a research station for far longer than it has been a reserve. The National Institute for Medical Research records that its Amani Medical Research Centre began as the East African Malaria Unit, set up at Ubwari in Muheza in 1949, and moved to Amani Hill in 1951 when the premises fell vacant after the East African Agricultural and Forestry Research Organization’s forestry research centre relocated to Muguga in Kenya. It became the East African Institute of Malaria and Vector Borne Diseases in 1954, was renamed Amani Medical Research Centre after the collapse of the East African Community in 1977, and passed to NIMR under the Act that established it in 1979.

Amani Hill Research Station remains in operation, on a site NIMR gives as 277.58 acres, which it puts approximately 74 kilometres from Tanga City and 35 kilometres from Muheza. That last figure measures a different thing from the 18 kilometres in the 1997 order — the order measures to the reserve, NIMR by road to the station — and both are given here rather than reconciled.

Visiting

The approach is from Muheza, off the Dar es Salaam–Arusha highway inland from Tanga, on a road that climbs through the tea estates. This is a different range from the one reached from Lushoto, and there is no short route between the two halves of the Usambaras; visiting both means going back down to the plains. Reaching either half is a road journey arranged in advance rather than a scheduled connection, and the guide to moving between Tanzania’s regions by road and air sets out how a detour into the East Usambaras fits alongside the rest of a trip.

• Birding is the main reason to come. See the bird watching guide.
• Forest walking on the trail network, which exists for the forest rather than for views — this is closed canopy, not escarpment. See the forest walk guide and the day hiking guide.
• Tea estates on the way up and around the reserve; see the tea plantation tours guide.
• Conservation visits. Few places in Tanzania make the conservation argument as legibly as a reserve built out of six older reserves, a donated tea estate, two inhabited enclaves and a derelict colonial arboretum. See the conservation tours guide.
• Photography in low light under closed canopy is its own discipline; see the photographic safari guide.

Amani is managed by Tanzania Forest Services rather than by TANAPA, which means its gate charge sits outside the national park tariff booklet, and no current published TFS figure could be confirmed for this guide. None is quoted here rather than guessed at. Ask for reserve entry and the guide fee as separate lines rather than assuming they are inside a transfer price, and see the guide to what conservation charges add to a Tanzanian trip for how the published tariffs are built and where they stop.

When to come

The East Usambaras sit in the bimodal zone — Vuli from October to December, Masika from March to May, on the Tanzania Meteorological Authority’s definitions — but with nearly two metres of rain a year, Amani is wet outside those windows too. Expect mud, leeches and cloud. Birders generally accept this as the price of the place. The national picture of Tanzania’s two rainfall regimes explains why the two-season calendar that governs this corner of Tanga Region does not apply to most of the country.

Common questions about Amani Nature Forest Reserve