An undiscovered gem

At a glance

Area: 1,613 sq km.

Location: on the eastern shores of Lake Tanganyika about 150 km south of Kigoma. 

Altitude: 780-2,462 meters above sea level.

Gazetted: 1985.

Vegetation: 75% woodland with lowland forest and montane forest mixed with bamboo. 

Climate: the park has two seasons; the dry season begins at the end of May and the wet season at the beginning of November (when heavy rains reach up to 250 cms a year).

Fauna: 55 recorded species including chimpanzees, brush-tailed porcupine, blue duiker, lion, warthog, sable antelope and Lichtenstein’s hartebeest.  

Activities: mountain climbing and trekking, boating, walking, chimpanzee tracking and bird-watching.

Overview

Mahale Mountains National Park is an undiscovered gem. Thirty times the size of its much more famous neighbour, Gombe Stream National Park, Mahale not only offers a wider diversity of plant and animal species than Gombe, but also a number of animals that are rarely seen there, such as elephants, buffaloes, roans, plains zebras and giraffes that remains isolated amid the ancient rainforests that line the eastern shores of Lake Tanganyika.

Home to some of the world’s last remaining wild chimpanzees

Like Gombe, the Mahale Mountains are home to some of the world’s last remaining wild chimpanzees (around 700): the area has also been a centre of chimpanzee research since the 1960s. Mountainous, uninhabited, with no roads and accessible only by boat, the area is sometimes referred to as Nkungwe, after Mount Nkungwe, which at 2,460 metres is the highest of six peaks in the Mahale Mountain range, which runs north-west to south-west down the Mahale promontory. 

A remote and unique ecological zone, the park is the meeting point for three different types of vegetation: Lowland forest and moist savannah in the west and north, woodlands and dry savannah in the east, and open woodland in the south. 

The chimpanzees

The most remarkable creatures of the park are its chimpanzees, which have been the focus of a twenty year study by Japanese biologists. Of the 700 thought to inhabit the park, more than 100 have been identified and individually named. Habituated to human presence by many years of exposure to human research teams, the chimps demonstrate the existence of strong bonds between related individuals, particularly between mother and offspring. Existing in loose-init communities of up to fifty animals, they feed on termites and ants, cooperating occasionally to hunt monkeys and bush pigs. Constantly interacting in grooming, play and communal greeting, the exceptionally dexterous chimpanzees have also been observed to use stalks of grass to dig out termites and ants. 

Montane wildlife

Animals of the relict northern montane forest include elephants, buffalos, leopards, bush pigs, Sharpe’s grysboks, bushbucks, blue duikers, brush-tailed porcupines, red-legged sun squirrels and a wide variety of primates. In the south are roan and sable antelopes, giraffes, kudus, elands and lions. The park is also home to two classically West African species, the giant forest squirrel and the brush-tailed porcupine. Other than chimpanzees, the primate species include olive baboons and black and white colobus monkeys. 

Birds

Home to six endemic subspecies of birds (yellow-streaked and mountain greenbul, Bocage’s akalat, yellow-bellied wattle-eye, yellow-throated woodland warbler and brown-chested aleth), Mahale is the only place in Tanzania to find Stuhlmann’s starling and the bamboo warbler. 

Getting there 

Mahale can be reached only by boat. The MV Liemba and the MV Mwongozo depart from Kigoma and stop in Mugambo, where they load and unload.. Local private boats can be haired to make the remaining 3 hour journey down the Lake to Kasongo, the parks headquarters. From Kigoma the trip takes around nine hours.