Current view: Text account
Site description (2001 baseline):
Site location and context
Gede lies some 94 km north of Mombasa on the Mombasa–Malindi road. A gazetted National Monument since 1927, now managed by the National Museums of Kenya, it protects the excavated ruins of an old Arab-African town, abandoned in the seventeenth century. Over the ruins, on the shallow coral rag soil, has grown a lowland semi-deciduous forest, maintained by a rainfall of around 1,100 mm/year. The 44 ha site, surrounded by farmland, is entirely fenced, and contains around 35 ha of coastal forest, traversed by narrow paths that wind between the excavated buildings. At least 50 indigenous tree species occur, including
Gyrocarpus americanus and
Sterculia appendiculata. The edge of Arabuko-Sokoke forest (IBA KE007) is c.3 km away to the west.
See Box for key species. Despite its small size, Gede is an important site for the globally threatened
Zoothera guttata, a non-breeding visitor. As many as 110 birds may be present between March and October each year. The globally threatened and restricted-range
Anthus sokokensis has also been recorded here (possibly as a visitor), though there are no recent records and the population, if still extant, must be tiny. Densities of most other birds are also low, although the listed avifauna is surprisingly diverse—42 forest-dependent
species have been recorded, including 12
of Kenya’s 29 East African Coast biome species and the restricted-range
Tauraco fischeri, which is resident. Gede is not listed under the biome category, since many of these species may only be occasional visitors.
Gypohierax angolensis regularly nest in the tall trees within the main excavation. Regionally threatened species include
Pitta angolensis,
Turdoides squamulatus, and
Erythrocercus holochlorus.
Non-bird biodiversity: The small mammal Rhynchocyon chrysopygus (EN), endemic to the northern East African coast, occurs here, formerly at high densities. The plant Phaulopsis gediensis has recently been described from this site.
Pressure/threats to key biodiversity
This is one of the few examples of semi-deciduous forest on coral rag—a distinctive and threatened forest type—that is formally protected in Kenya. The ruined walls and buildings, overgrown with beautiful forest trees, are extremely attractive, and Gede is a popular destination with tourists at the coast. Some 40,000 visitors came here in 1989, though there has been a slight drop-off in the 1990s. The forest is now completely surrounded by farmed land, but up until around the early 1980s there were corridors to other forest patches in the Malindi-Watamu area. Small trees and undergrowth along some trails have been extensively cleared since 1990, which has made the habitat less suitable for
Zoothera guttata; however, overall numbers of this species changed little between 1983 and 1992. Local use and disturbance of the forest, formerly a problem, has been controlled by fencing. A pack of guard-dogs now roams the site at night, but unfortunately they have eaten their way through much of the population of
Rhynchocyon chrysopygus. The Kipepeo project, which encourages butterfly farming among local communities around Arabuko-Sokoke forest, is based at Gede, where there are butterfly flight and display cages. A 5-ha section of degraded land to the west of the main excavations is now being restored and growing up as forest, through the Gede National Monument Forest Restoration Project (originally the Gede Koningschool Forest Project).
Recommended citation
BirdLife International (2024) Important Bird Area factsheet: Gede Ruins National Monument (Kenya). Downloaded from
https://datazone.birdlife.org/site/factsheet/gede-ruins-national-monument-iba-kenya on 23/11/2024.
