- Taita-Taveta District
Taita Taveta-District is one of the seventy-one districts of
Kenya , located in theCoast Province of that country. It lies approximately 200 km northwest ofMombasa and 360 km southeast ofNairobi city.The population of the district 30 years ago was approximately 45,000 persons but this has shot up to well over 250,000 persons with population densities ranging from 3 persons per km2. to more than 800 persons per km2. This is due to the varied rainfall and terrain with the lower zones receiving an average 440 mm of rain per annum and the highland areas receiving up to 1900 mm of rain. The range rises in altitude from 500 m above sea level to almost 2,300 a.s.a at vuria peak which is the highest.
District land use
The district covers an area of 16,975 km2. of which a bulk 62% or 11,100 km2. is within Tsavo East and
Tsavo West National Park s. The remaining 5,876 km2 is occupied by ranches,sisal estates, water bodies such as Lakes Challa and Jipe inTaveta , and the hilltop forests which occupy less than 100 km2. or approximately 10 km² out of 587.5 km².The lowland areas of the district that are do not belong to national parks are divided to ranches, estates and wild life sanctuaries. The district has approximately 25 ranches. The main land use in ranche is cattle grazing. The three operating sisal estates of the district are the
Teita Sisal Estate ,Voi Sisal Estate and Taveta Sisal Estate. Many ranches utilize also wildlife tourism and conservation. The Taita Hills and Saltlick Lodges sanctuary is located in the district.There are 48 forests which have survived on hill tops in the district of which 28 are gazetted and are under government protection and management. They range in size from small 500 square metres with a few remnant trees to modestly vast 2 square kilometres indigenous and exotic forest mountains. These forests are part of a unique Eastern Arch range of forests which are found mostly in Eastern
Tanzania with theTaita Hills forming the only Kenyan Eastern Arc forest type in East Africa.The
Taita Hills forest hold a unique biodiversity with 13 taxa of plants and 9 taxa of animals found only in the Taita Hills and nowhere else in the world. In addition 22 plant species found in the Taita Hills forests are typical of the Eastern arc forests. The next being in eastern Tanzania. Some of the endemic African violet - Saintpaulia teitensis among others. Within these beautiful indigenous forests, bubble pure clean water to the lowland areas to cater for both human agricultural activities and wildlife in the Taita game sanctuary and Aruba dam in Tsavo East. The lower plains are thus supplied with water by the forests in the hills which are a good catchment of rains. [http://www.easternarc.org/html/bio.html]Townships and villages
The capital of the district is small town of
Wundanyi , thoughVoi is the largest town in the district.The district has four constituencies:
*Taveta
*Wundanyi
*Mwatate
*Voiee also
*
List of ranches, estates and sanctuaries in Taita-Taveta district
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