National Parks Africa » Tana River Primate Reserve

Halfway between the Arawale Reserve and the mouth of the Tana River at the Indian Ocean, some 130 kilometers (81 miles) north of Malindi, lies the Tana River Primate Reserve. This is a small protected area of riverine forest covering 169 square kilometres (68 square miles) which was gazetted in 1976 specifically to protect the world’s only population of one of the four subspecies of crested mangabey monkey, the endangered Tana mangabey (Cercocebus galeritus galeritus). There are two subspecies which live in the high forests of Zaire, about which almost nothing is known, and another endangered subspecies in the Uzungwa mountains of Tanzania, the Sanje crested mangabey, which was only discovered by scientists in 1981.

The Tana mangabey is at serious risk and, despite protection in the reserve, its population has dropped from around 2,000 in the early 1970s to between 800 and 1,000 today. The major threats to its narrow belt of riverine habitat include clearing for agriculture, felling of large trees for making traditional dugout canoes, annual burning of the flood plain grasses which is inexorably eroding away the forest edge, and natural changes to the river course in this relatively flat, flood plain area. The Tana mangabey is therefore included in the most threatened category of the 1973 International Convention on Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which makes it difficult, but not impossible to export this rare beast. However, habitat changes due to the inevitable expansion of human populations rather than trade are likely to bring about its demise in the near future.

There is also a small group of threatened red colobus monkey as well as red river hog and numerous hippos, crocodiles and other riverine animals. Bird-life is prolific.

Visitors must either camp or attempt to book at Baomo Lodge (often closed) to the north of the reserve.