National Parks Africa » Mahale Mountains National Park

Mohale Mountain National Park is much larger and more remote than Gombe, with a more complex landscape, many more animals and better potential for long-term survival as an ecosystem.

It was established in 1986 and covers an area of 1,200 square kilometres (480 square miles). Altitude ranges from 770 metres (2,525 feet) along the lake shore to 2,460 metres (8,070 feet) on the mountain tops. There are many steep valleys with miombo woodland plains in the south. Average rainfall is 1,000 mm (39 inches) per year. Access to Mahale is by boat from Kigoma which can take any time from 10 to 24 hours. It may be wise to check the state of the airstrip first.

The Mahale Mountains rise from the lakeshore to misty heights, their steep slopes swathed in thick jungle-like vegetation. The mountains provide both a habitat for many kinds of animal life and also help to protect the park from human encroachment. The lake shore confines the western side of the park and the tsetse fly-infested miombo woodland to the south helps buffer inroads from that side.

People live and farm along Mahale’s northern boundary (there is a village where you can stop to get supplies of fresh food), but it is somewhat isolated here due to the Malagarasi River. It enters Lake Tanganyika to the north of Mahale and has a vast swamp behind its wide mouth, across which no road has yet been built. Local people use the lake as their road, with a variety of different size boats. Transport inside Mahale is strictly by foot!

Mahale is a remnant of the forests that once stretched across all of equatorial Africa and harbours a wide variety of animals: bushbucks, waterbucks, bush-pigs, buffalos, elephants, leopards, the same wide variety of primates as at Gombe and many different kinds of forest birds. In the south are giraffes, roan and sable antelopes, kudus, elands, lions and a host of miombo birds. Clawless otters feed off the fish in the lake.

Championing chimps:
Dr Jane Goodall and her team in Gombe, together with Drs Itani, Nishida and their colleagues in Mahale, have been studying chimpanzee behaviour since the early 1960s. These normally shy apes have become completely habituated to human observers. The studies have revolutionised our understanding of our closest animal relative.

The chimps live in large, loosely-knit communities where family bonds are very important throughout life. The community’s range is defended by a coalition of related males.

Mostly vegetarian, chimps also eat substantial amounts of ants and termites, using stems and grasses as simple tools to extract the insects from their nests. They also frequently cooperate to hunt and eat larger prey such as monkeys and bushpigs.

Chimps are excitable and emotional; between the males of a community there is often a vigorous struggle for status, and between communities gang warfare has been seen, sometimes resulting in death. They are capable of infanticide, and of dying of grief at the loss of a mother. Yet on the whole they are peaceful, likeable, more handsome than their threadbare cousins in zoos, and more like ourselves than we may care to admit.