Jozani Chwaka Bay

Jozani lies in the south of Unguja, the main island of Zanzibar, in the Kusini district. It is the island's only national park, gazetted in 2004, and covers about 50 km². It is managed by the government of Zanzibar, not by TANAPA, which runs the national parks on the mainland.

The park is part of a bigger protected landscape. In 2016 UNESCO named the Jozani–Chwaka Bay Biosphere Reserve, which UNESCO describes as a mosaic of mangroves, tropical forest, coral-rag forest, groundwater forest, salt marsh, farms and villages. Its core and buffer zones are uninhabited; about 16,400 people live in the surrounding transition zone, most of them Hadimu. The area has also been on Tanzania's tentative list for World Heritage status since 1997.

The forest is really several forests. Groundwater forest grows where the water table is close to the surface, and parts of it flood in the rains; it is tall and damp, with palms and ferns beneath the trees. Coral-rag forest grows on the dry, broken coral rock that covers much of eastern Zanzibar. Towards Chwaka Bay the forest turns to mangrove, flooded twice a day by the tide.

The Zanzibar red colobus lives only on Unguja. Its ancestors are thought to have been cut off from the mainland when the sea rose at the end of the last ice age; genetic studies put its closest relative as the Udzungwa red colobus of the Udzungwa Mountains on the mainland. It has a dark red back, a black-and-white face with a pink mouth and nose, and a crown of long, pale hair. It is also called Kirk's red colobus, after Sir John Kirk, the British official in Zanzibar who first brought it to scientists' attention.

It is listed as Endangered. For a long time it was thought to number only a couple of thousand. Then, in a census published in 2019, a Wildlife Conservation Society team spent 4,725 hours in the field and counted about 5,862 animals in 342 groups, more than three times the average of earlier estimates. About 4,000 of them, some 69 per cent, live in protected areas.

The forest they live in is still shrinking. The census team reported that Zanzibar was losing more than 19 km² of forest a year to farms and houses. The monkeys also die on the road. The main road to the east coast runs through the park, and in the late 1990s park staff reported a colobus killed every two or three weeks. Four speed bumps were then put in near the entrance, and a 2021 study found far fewer deaths: about one carcass every six weeks between 2016 and 2019.

Sykes' monkeys, a form of the blue monkey, share the forest with the colobus. UNESCO lists Aders's duiker, a tiny forest antelope found only on Zanzibar and in coastal Kenya. Wikipedia reports that its numbers on Zanzibar fell from about 5,000 in 1983 to about 640 in 1999. UNESCO also names the frog Kassina jozani, which is named after the forest. There are bushbabies and the nocturnal Zanzibar tree hyrax, and UNESCO counts 168 bird species in the biosphere reserve.

The Zanzibar leopard is almost certainly gone. The island's leopards were hunted as vermin and as witches' familiars for much of the twentieth century; the last confirmed sighting of a live one was in the early 1980s. A camera-trap photo in 2018 was said to show one, but many experts doubt it.

A visit usually has two parts, each with a guide. The first is a walk in the forest to find the red colobus. Some groups spend time near the entrance and in the trees along the edge of the forest. The second is the mangrove boardwalk, a raised wooden walkway that takes you out over the tidal mud and the tangle of mangrove roots.

The park is on the road from Stone Town to the east-coast beaches at Paje, so it fits easily into a half day, or into a transfer between the city and the coast. Most people combine it with a spice farm. See the Unguja guide for the rest of the island.

Keep your distance from the monkeys and do not feed them. Drive slowly on the road through the park; the speed bumps are there for the colobus.

Fees. Jozani is not in TANAPA's tariff schedule, and we have not found an official fee list from the Zanzibar authorities. Tour operators and travellers report entrance fees from roughly USD 10 to USD 25 per adult, usually with a guide included. Check at the gate or with your operator.

When to go. The forest can be visited all year. Zanzibar's long rains fall roughly from March to May; the forest paths and boardwalk are wetter then, but the monkeys are there all year.