Forest Walks in Tanzania: Butterflies, Bats, Orchids and Old Trees
Guided trails through rainforest, coastal forest and mangrove focused on primates, birds, butterflies, bats and plants rather than big game, from the Eastern Arc massifs to Jozani and Pugu.
Tanzania's forests are the part of the country a safari drives past. The Eastern Arc mountains have been forested for tens of millions of years, long enough that a quarter of their plants grow nowhere else, and walking in them is a slow, close, ground-level activity with nothing in common with a game drive. This guide covers the forests worth walking and what is in them: the butterflies of Amani, the flying foxes of Pemba and the bat caves near Dar, the orchid meadows of Kitulo, and the botanical legacy of a German research station that is now the forest's biggest management problem.
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Forest Walks Guide in Tanzania
What a Forest Walk Is, and Why It Is Not a Game Drive
A forest walk in Tanzania is a slow walk on a narrow path with a guide who stops constantly. The subject is not large animals. It is what is on the trunk, under the leaf, across the path and calling above you, and the pleasure of it is entirely in the detail.
This is the opposite discipline to a game drive, and people who expect one from the other are disappointed both ways. Forest reduces visibility to a few metres, and almost everything is small, cryptic or high in the canopy. In forest you see what somebody shows you and very little else, which makes the guide matter more than the vehicle ever did.
What makes it worth doing in Tanzania specifically is the Eastern Arc — a chain of ancient crystalline mountains from the Usambaras down to the Udzungwas, forested continuously for a very long time and buffered by Indian Ocean rainfall. That continuity produced extraordinary endemism. Around 3,450 vascular plant species are recorded in the Usambaras alone, and over a quarter of them are thought to be endemic or near-endemic.
"Nature walk" and "forest walk" are the same activity under different names; the first is simply the broader term and is often used for walks outside forest. If you are on a path with a guide, looking at small things, you are doing this.
The Rules: Guides, Rangers and Where the Requirement Applies
The position differs between national parks and forest reserves, and it is worth knowing which you are in.
In national parks, a guide is compulsory. TANAPA's management plan for Udzungwa Mountains National Park states it in the visitor code that walkers sign: "A park guide must accompany you at all times in the forest." The same plan commits the park to providing armed rangers to all visitors, and caps groups on the peak hikes at eight people including the ranger and guide. Walking activities are also restricted to children of twelve and over.
In nature forest reserves the position is looser. Tanzania Forest Services offers guided tours as an enhancement rather than publishing a compulsion, and guides at reserves such as Magamba are arranged through the local tourist office. In practice taking a guide is the norm and is what makes the walk worth anything, but this guide will not claim a legal requirement that TFS does not publish.
Butterflies: Amani and the East Usambaras
Amani, in the East Usambaras behind Tanga, is the best butterfly forest that is genuinely open to visitors.
It became Tanzania's first nature reserve in 1997, when six separate forest reserves were amalgamated into one protected block of about 8,360 hectares running from roughly 190 to 1,130 metres. Rainfall is high, close to 1,900 millimetres a year, and the altitude range within one reserve is part of why the species list is so long.
A survey recorded 112 butterfly species at Amani, of which two are probably endemic to the East Usambaras and a further nine near-endemic. The named endemics are Hypolimnas antevorta and a local race of Charaxes usambarae. Worth noting how the endemism concentrates: only about a fifth of the recorded butterflies are forest-dependent, but over four-fifths of the endemic and near-endemic ones are. The special species are the ones that cannot leave the forest.
Butterflies are also easier to see than most forest wildlife, because they use light gaps, puddles and the forest edge — so the track itself is often the best place to stand.
The butterfly project, described honestly
Amani is known for community butterfly farming, run with the Tanzania Forest Conservation Group, in which households rear pupae in forest-edge enclosures. It is a genuinely good conservation model — the income depends on the forest staying standing.
It is also under strain. A government ban on butterfly exports from the Amani area came into force in 2019 and was still in place in early 2023, with exporters publicly appealing for it to be lifted later that year. Whether it has since been resolved could not be established, so nothing here should be read as saying the project is currently exporting.
TFS does still list a butterfly farming tour among Amani's visitor activities, so the farms can be visited whether or not the export trade is running.
If butterflies are the point, look wider
Amani's headline numbers are actually stronger for less charismatic groups. Of 41 millipede species recorded around Amani, at least 30 are believed endemic to the East Usambaras, and 55 endemic land snail species have been described. If your interest is genuinely in invertebrate endemism rather than in pretty wings, ask your guide to show you the leaf litter.
Udzungwa is the other butterfly forest, with over 250 species recorded, several of them endemic.
Bats
Two very different bat experiences, at opposite ends of the country.
The Pemba flying fox
The Pemba flying fox is a large fruit bat found only on Pemba, and its recovery is one of the better conservation stories in Tanzania. It is listed by the IUCN as Vulnerable, with an increasing population trend — though the assessment itself is now flagged as needing updating.
A 2024 survey put the population at roughly 25,300 to 27,400 animals across 81 roost sites, up from 18,200 to 22,100 in 2008. Hunting still occurs at about 17 per cent of roosts.
The interesting and awkward finding is where they now live. In 2008 around 28 per cent of the population roosted in urban centres. By 2024 that had risen to 72.5 per cent, with the colonies at Chake Chake and Wete alone holding nearly 59 per cent of all the bats on the island. Over the same period the forest roost at Kidike, long the destination for visitors wanting to see them, fell from 4,978 animals to 1,491, while the island-wide population rose to between 25,328 and 27,412. The bats redistributed rather than died.
The implication is worth stating plainly: the biggest colonies are now in towns, and a forest sanctuary visit may show far fewer bats than the reputation suggests. The Ngezi roosts hold hundreds rather than thousands.
Pugu, outside Dar es Salaam
The Pugu-Kazimzumbwi forest reserve sits about twenty kilometres from Dar es Salaam — TFS gives it as 8,965 hectares — and is the easiest bat site in the country to reach.
TFS lists bat caves among its attractions and bat watching among its activities. The reserve has 17 recorded bat species, the richest bat fauna of any Tanzanian coastal forest so far surveyed. The roosts sit in a landscape that also contains a major kaolin deposit and disused workings, and no authoritative source cleanly separates the natural cavities from the old mine adits — so treat "the Pugu bat caves" as covering both.
The reserve is close enough to the city to be under real pressure from charcoal cutting and encroachment, and a visit is a more sobering experience than a pristine one. For the caves themselves as a destination, see cave exploration.
A health warning that belongs here
The US Centers for Disease Control advises travellers that bats can spread rabies as well as histoplasmosis, Ebola and Marburg virus disease, and its published guidance is to stay away from caves, tunnels and mines where bats live.
That sits awkwardly against a bat-watching activity, and the honest position is a middle one. Never touch a bat, alive or dead. Do not handle guano or disturb a roost — histoplasmosis is contracted from inhaling spores in disturbed droppings in enclosed spaces. If you are immunocompromised, weigh that risk seriously before entering an enclosed roost. Watching bats emerge at dusk from outside a cave carries none of these problems.
Wildflowers and Orchids: Kitulo
Kitulo, in the Southern Highlands, is a national park gazetted in 2005 specifically to protect a flowering grassland — which is unusual enough to be worth the journey on its own.
It covers 465.9 square kilometres of high plateau, rising to Mtorwi at 2,961 metres. TANAPA records more than 350 vascular plant species including 45 terrestrial orchids, and the endemism is remarkable: 31 of those orchid species are endemic to Tanzania, 16 to Kitulo and the neighbouring Poroto Mountains, and at least three to the park itself.
The flowering season runs especially from late November to April, which is exactly the period most safari itineraries avoid. That is the trade-off Kitulo demands: to see it doing the thing it was protected for, you go in the wet.
Tanzanians call the plateau Bustani ya Mungu, God's garden. It is also widely called the Serengeti of Flowers, a phrase TANAPA itself uses, though nobody seems to know who coined it.
The park also protects a juniper forest in the Nhumbe valley that TANAPA describes as containing the tallest junipers in the world, towering to fifty metres — a striking claim, and one worth attributing to the park rather than asserting flatly.
Why the park exists
Kitulo was gazetted in response to a conservation emergency, and knowing it changes how the meadows look.
Orchid tubers are dug for chikanda, a traditional dish, and the trade escalated sharply into an export business. A study published in Oryx found that as many as 85 orchid species may be at risk, with an estimated 2.2 to 4.1 million tubers a year being taken across the border into Zambia, and areas of Ufipa, Mbeya and the Kipengere range already stripped of their orchids. All orchids are listed on CITES Appendix II.
The flowers on the plateau are the survivors of that. It is a better reason to walk carefully than any sign.
Plants, Trees and the Amani Botanical Garden
Botanical walking in Tanzania has one outstanding destination, and it comes with a cautionary tale attached.
The Amani botanical garden was established by the German colonial administration in 1902 as a network of trial plots — cinchona for quinine, rubber, eucalyptus, timber species, spices — and ran until the British closed it in 1950. TFS describes it as the oldest botanical garden in East Africa, with over a thousand plant species across its gazetted 244 hectares.
Much of it is now derelict and slowly returning to forest, which is precisely what makes it interesting to walk through: enormous specimen trees standing in rows in what is otherwise wild forest.
It is also the source of Amani's worst management problem. Several species introduced for trial escaped, and the garden is now understood to be the origin of the reserve's most serious invasives — above all Maesopsis eminii, a fast-growing tree that colonises gaps in native forest, along with Clidemia hirta, lantana and guava. A scientific garden built to improve the forest became the largest single threat to it. That is the story worth carrying round the plots.
African violets
The Usambaras are the wild home of the African violet, the houseplant. Around twenty species are endemic to the Eastern Arc, growing on damp shaded rock faces rather than on windowsills. One taxonomic note: botanists have folded the old genus Saintpaulia into Streptocarpus, so the name on older signs and labels is out of date even though the plant is not.
Where to Walk
The East Usambaras — Amani
The richest and most rewarding, covered above. Around 340 bird species are recorded, and the reserve also runs night walks, which is when the chameleons and amphibians are findable.
The West Usambaras — Magamba and Lushoto
Magamba, above Lushoto, covers 9,284 hectares between roughly 1,650 and 2,287 metres and was gazetted in 2008. Kwahondo Peak, at 2,287 metres, is the highest point in the Usambaras. There are named and maintained trails — the Grewal Trail, the Kigulu Hakwewa trail to a viewpoint at 1,850 metres, the Kwahondo Peak trail, and the Jiwe la Mungu or Stone of God viewpoint.
One correction worth carrying: the "German cave" that appears in marketing for the reserve is not a cave. It is a tunnel cut into the hillside by German residents as a refuge during the First World War.
Magamba is also the largest surviving fragment of a forest that has mostly gone. The West Usambara block is thought to have covered around 2,300 square kilometres historically; by 2000 only about 323 square kilometres remained. Walking there is walking in a remnant.
Bird species to ask your guide about include the Usambara weaver — Near Threatened, with a population estimated at between 600 and 1,700 mature individuals — along with the Usambara akalat, banded green sunbird and Fischer's turaco. You may also see the Usambara eagle-owl listed; the IUCN now treats it not as a separate species but as a rare Tanzanian montane race of Fraser's eagle-owl, so ignore the alarming conservation status that older sources attach to it.
Note that Mazumbai, often mentioned alongside these, is a research forest owned and run by Sokoine University of Agriculture rather than a general-access visitor site. Access needs arranging rather than assuming.
Udzungwa
The best forest walking inside a national park. Gazetted in 1992 and covering 1,990 square kilometres, Udzungwa holds eleven primate species, two of which occur nowhere else on earth — the Sanje crested mangabey and the Iringa red colobus. Two mangabey groups have been habituated, one for research and one for visitors. There are around 400 bird species with two found only in the park, plus some 2,500 plant species.
One expectation to correct: the kipunji, the monkey discovered in 2003, is effectively absent from the national park itself. TANAPA's own management plan places almost the entire Udzungwa population in the forest reserves beyond the park boundary. You will not see one on a park walk. The habituated primate trekking products are covered in the wildlife guides — see primate watching.
Udzungwa's forest trails also lead to Sanje Falls, which has its own guide.
Forest on the coast and islands
Jozani on Unguja is the most-visited forest in the country and the easiest introduction, with a mangrove boardwalk alongside the forest trail. Ngezi on Pemba is quieter, wilder and better. Pugu, described above, is the closest forest to Dar es Salaam.
Practicalities
- Go early. Birds and primates are active for the first three hours after dawn and much harder after ten.
- Take binoculars that focus close. Forest viewing is often at a few metres, and many binoculars cannot.
- Wear long sleeves and trousers. Not for warmth — for safari ants, nettles and thorns.
- Expect to be wet. Eastern Arc forest is wet even outside the rains, and paths hold water.
- Watch for ants. Columns cross paths constantly and go up a trouser leg in seconds. Boots and tucked socks solve it.
- Move slowly and stop often. Almost everything worth seeing is found by standing still.
- Take a torch on a night walk; chameleons show up white against the leaves.
- Leeches occur in the wetter forests. Harmless, unpleasant, removable.
When to Go
Forest is the one landscape in Tanzania that does not need the dry season, which is useful, because the dry season falls in different months in the north and in the south and the forests are spread across both.
- The dry months, roughly June to October — easier paths, more comfortable walking, fewer leeches.
- The wet months — better for amphibians, chameleons, fungi and flowering plants, and dramatically better for Kitulo, whose flowering peaks from late November to April.
Birding is good year round, with a boost from migrants between roughly November and April.
Questions Travellers Ask
Do I need a guide for a forest walk?
In national parks, yes — TANAPA requires a park guide to accompany visitors at all times in the forest, and commits to providing armed rangers. In nature forest reserves TFS publishes no equivalent compulsion, but guides are arranged through reserve offices and are the practical norm. You will also see far more with one.
Where are the best butterflies?
Amani in the East Usambaras, where a survey recorded 112 species, two probably endemic and nine near-endemic. Udzungwa has over 250 recorded species. Amani also has community butterfly farms that can be visited.
Can I still visit the Amani butterfly farms?
TFS lists a butterfly farming tour among the reserve's activities. A government ban on butterfly exports from the area came into force in 2019 and was still in place in early 2023; whether it has since been lifted could not be established, so do not assume the export side is operating.
Where can I see the Pemba flying fox?
On Pemba, but be aware the population has shifted. A 2024 survey found 72.5 per cent now roosting in urban centres, with Chake Chake and Wete holding nearly 59 per cent of all the island's bats, while the forest roost at Kidike fell from about 4,978 animals in 2008 to 1,491. The island-wide population rose over the same period, so the bats moved rather than died, but a forest sanctuary visit may show fewer bats than expected.
Is it safe to visit bat caves?
The CDC advises travellers to stay away from caves, tunnels and mines where bats live, because bats can carry rabies, histoplasmosis and other diseases. If you do go, never touch a bat, do not disturb roosts or guano, and think carefully if you are immunocompromised. Watching bats emerge at dusk from outside a cave avoids the main risks.
When do the Kitulo wildflowers bloom?
Especially from late November to April, according to TANAPA — which means visiting during the rains, the season most itineraries avoid. The park protects more than 350 vascular plant species including 45 terrestrial orchids, 31 of which are endemic to Tanzania.
Will I see the kipunji in Udzungwa?
No. TANAPA's own management plan places almost the entire Udzungwa kipunji population in the forest reserves outside the national park boundary. The primates you can realistically see in the park are the Iringa red colobus and the Sanje crested mangabey, both found nowhere else.
Is a forest walk suitable for children?
Short reserve walks generally are. Inside national parks, walking activities are restricted to children of twelve and over, and peak hikes are capped at eight people including the ranger and guide.