Kwale Island (''Kisiwa cha Kwale'', in

Swahili Swahili may refer to: * Swahili language, a Bantu language officially used in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda and widely spoken in the African Great Lakes. * Swahili people, an ethnic group in East Africa. * Swahili culture, the culture of the Swahili p ...

) is a protected, seasonally inhabited island in the

Pemba Channel The Pemba Channel is the strait separating the eastern coast of mainland Africa on the coast of central and northern Tanga Region from Pemba Island to the south of the Indian Ocean. The channel is entirely in Tanzanian territorial waters The ...

under the Tanga Marine Reserves (TMRS) with the

IUCN category II IUCN protected area categories, or IUCN protected area management categories, are categories used to classify protected areas in a system developed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The enlisting of such areas is part ...

located inside

Kwale Kwale is a small town in Mombasa and the capital of Kwale County, Kenya. It is located at ; 30 km southwest of Mombasa and 15 km inland. The town had an urban population of 10,063 (2019 census). It is next to the Shimba Hills Nation ...

ward in

Mkinga District Mkinga District, officially the, Mkinga District Council (''Wilaya ya Mkinga'', in Swahili) is one of eleven administrative districts of Tanga Region in Tanzania. It was created from Muheza District in 2007. The District covers an area of . The ...

Tanga Region Tanga Region () is one of Tanzania's 31 administrative regions of Tanzania, regions. The region covers an area of . The region is comparable in size to the combined land area of the nation state of Burundi. The regional capital is the municipalit ...

Tanzania Tanzania, officially the United Republic of Tanzania, is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It is bordered by Uganda to the northwest; Kenya to the northeast; the Indian Ocean to the east; Mozambique and Malawi to t ...

. The

coral Corals are colonial marine invertebrates within the subphylum Anthozoa of the phylum Cnidaria. They typically form compact Colony (biology), colonies of many identical individual polyp (zoology), polyps. Coral species include the important Coral ...

island, located approximately a kilometer offshore in Manza Bay, and the modern hamlet on the shoreline are both referred to as Kwale. 86.2% of Kwale Island, or 528.1 Ha, is covered with

mangroves A mangrove is a shrub or tree that grows mainly in coastal saline or brackish water. Mangroves grow in an equatorial climate, typically along coastlines and tidal rivers. They have particular adaptations to take in extra oxygen and remove sal ...

. Kwale Island and Ulenge Island are the only seasonally inhabited by islands in the marine reserve, thus the two have the most human impact. The Island has an average elevation of .

Geography and ecology

The Kwale Marine Reserve's dominant biotope is mangrove vegetation. Mangroves are more closely packed towards the west and south coasts, where they face the mainland and Kwale Bay, where the bottom is made up of fine, muddy sediments, than along the seashore, where the bottom is more rocky with only a thin layer of material. Despite the presence of all mangrove species, species with robust root systems, such as

Rhizophora mucronata ''Rhizophora mucronata'' (loop-root mangrove, red mangrove or Asiatic mangrove) is a species of mangrove found on coasts and river banks in East Africa and the Indo-Pacific region. Description ''Rhizophora mucronata'' is a small to medium si ...

and

Sonneratia alba ''Sonneratia alba'' is a mangrove tree in the family Lythraceae. The specific epithet ' is from the Latin meaning 'white', referring to the flowers. Description ''S. alba'' grows up to tall with a trunk diameter up to . The cracked to fissured ...

, predominate. Similar to Ulenge, Kwale Islands mangroves are susceptible to very regular tidal water movement that tends to wash across the mangrove. Depending on the strength and direction of the ocean currents, sediment buildup is fairly weak and seasonal. Numerous animal and plant populations exist there, albeit they have not been studied. The important bird area, IBM 35, as designated by Birdlife International, includes the Ulenge and Kwale Island Marine Reserves. This bird region is home to a variety of different bird species, such as the

Greater Sand Plover The greater sand plover (''Anarhynchus leschenaultii'') is a small wader in the plover family of birds. The spelling is often given as "greater sandplover" or "greater sand-plover", but the official IOC and British Ornithologists' Union spelling ...

Curlew Sandpiper The curlew sandpiper (''Calidris ferruginea'') is a small wader that breeds on the tundra of Arctic Siberia. It is strongly bird migration, migratory, wintering mainly in Africa, but also in south and southeast Asia and in Australia and New Zeal ...

Crab Plover The crab-plover or crab plover (''Dromas ardeola)'' is a coastal wader (shorebird). It is the only member of the genus ''Dromas'' and the family Dromadidae. It is unique among waders in making use of ground warmth to aid the incubation of its e ...

, and migrating waders. Coral reefs and mangroves are not specifically in risk of extinction, but they are under threat from human activity and causes related to climate change.

History

On Kwale Island, the Wadigo community once resided close to the beaches. In the 19th Century Masai frequently attacked the Wadigo from Mwandusi village, so they fled and eventually settled permanently in Kwale Island interior where they were safe from attack. However, they were eventually forced to go back to the mainland due to a lack of fresh water and expanding family sizes. The majority of Digo call Kwale village home. Throughout the First and Second World Wars, this island functioned as a stronghold for colonial forces.

Historical site

Today, a dense vegetation of trees, including large baobabs,

, and dense thorn bushes completely covers the island. Since there is no legal protection, people are chopping down the forests for fire wood. Additionally, the island has produced some Swahili ware pottery fragments from the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...

, indicating that it once belonged to the

states. The island has historically been deserted since.Cooke, H. J. "The coastal geomorphology of Tanga, Tanzania." Geographical Review (1974): 517-535.

References

Mkinga District Islands of Tanzania Coastal islands of Tanzania Uninhabited islands of Tanzania Islands of Tanga Region {{TangaTZ-geo-stub