Gombe National Park, Tanzania

Brief History

In 1960 Jane Goodall began research at Kakombe Valley (Kigoma District, Tanzania); Gombe National Park was established in 1968 and the Gombe Stream Research Center was founded in 1967. It is located on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika,15km north of the town of Kigoma and accessible only by boat. The park measures about 32km², but may be significantly larger in actual surface area (36-60km² appears in literature). The park lies between the lake and a rift escarpment on its eastern side, some 3-4km inland. Elevation ranges from 775m above sea level at the lake to 1500m along the escarpment. Its "...hills rise steeply from the lakeshore to the crest of the rift escarpment... Steep-sided valleys run from the escarpment down into the lake and these, in turn, are intersected by deep ravines draining from the ridges between the valleys" (Goodall, J.1986). Vegetation is a mix of grassland, open woodland, semideciduous forest and evergreen forest.

Research has focussed on the behavior of the Kakombe community of the eastern chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii, with the Mitumba community (north end of park) being habituated in the early 1990s. Continuing studies of several troops of baboons (Papio anubis) began in the early 1970s. There have been shorter studies of red colobus monkeys (Colobus badius tephrosceles). Research has been concentrated in the central and (recently) northern portions of the Park; there is at least one unhabituated community of chimpanzees in the south. Total population has been estimated at roughly 150, but no census has been conducted. The chimpanzees were probably not genetically isolated from populations to the north through the 1980s, but gene flow has probably been restricted for some years and the population was effectively isolated by the 1990s.

The following chronology is modified from Teleki (1976) & Goodall (1986):

• 1962 to 1965 Goodall habituated chimpanzees, utilizing random provisioning.
• 1965 to 1967 she continued this process, increasing the amount of provisioning as successful observations were being made. The study population began to increase rapidly due to immigrants to the provisioning site, but in 1966 there was an outbreak of a paralytic diseas, most likely poliomyelitis. Six individuals died or disappeared, and six others survived as cripples.
• 1967 to 1973 provisioning was lessened because of its effects on party sizes and travel patterns of the chimpanzees.
• 1968 there was an epidemic of a respiratory disease, followed by a second in 1969.
• 1968? graduate students, and later undergraduate research assistants, began coming to Gombe and during the early 1970s there were often 10-15 or more foreign researchers onsite at a time.
• 1970 the Kasakela-Kahama (KK) community began to divide.
• 1972 .Lessened provisioning caused an "emigration" of chimpanzees.
• 1972. Two separate social groups recognized.
• 1974 Passion and Pom (mother and female offspring) begin their attacks on infants (lasted till 1978).
• 1974 to 1977 Kasakela community males began a series of attacks against members of the Kahama community (either an offshoot of Kakombe or conceivably always a second community), that led to the deaths of all Kahama males.
• In 1975 4 researchers were kidnapped by Zairian rebels, and although they were released unharmed, it put an end to outside researchers at Gombe until around 1989. In the interim trained Tanzanian field assistants continued collecting behavioral data.

For additional information (including photos and updates on ongoing research at Gombe) see Discover Chimpanzees.

Primary source for the following Site Data is McGrew et. al. (1996), Great Ape Societies (Cambridge University Press), Appendix.

SITE DATA

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