Gombe is a park without roads, making it a perfect place to get out and stretch your legs as you seek to spot some of the park’s native inhabitants in their natural habitats. In addition to chimpanzees, the park is also home to several other primate species including the beachcomber olive baboons, bush babies, and the red colobus monkeys that the chimpanzees hunt. The park is also home to hippos, crocodiles, and leopards
Gombe is the smallest of all the Tanzania’s National Parks: a fragile strip of Chimpanzee habitat straddling the steep slopes and river valleys that hem in the sandy Northern shore of Lake Tanganyika. Its Chimpanzees – habituated to human visitors – were made famous by the pioneering work of Jane Goodall, whom in 1960 founded a behavioural research program that now stands as the longest-running study of its kind in the world. The matriarch Fifi, the last surviving member of the original community – that was only three-years old when Goodall first set foot in Gombe – is still regularly seen by visitors.
Chimpanzees share about 98% of their genes with humans, and no scientific expertise is required to distinguish between the individual repertoires of pants, hoots and screams that define the celebrities, the power-brokers, and the supporting characters. Perhaps you will see a flicker of understanding when you look into a Chimp’s eyes, assessing you in return – a look of apparent recognition across the narrowest of species barriers.
The most visible of Gombe’s other Mammals are also Primates. A troop of beachcomber olive baboons, under study since the 1960s, is exceptionally habituated, whereas the Red-tailed and Red Colobus Monkeys – the latter regularly hunted by Chimps – stick to the Forest Canopy.
Birdwatchers will be particularly fascinated by the park, whose forest offers a cross-section of East African grassland birds and West African forest species. Over 200 species of bird call the park home.
