Gombe Stream National Park Facts for Kids

Quick facts for kids Gombe National Park
Chimpanzees at Gombe NP
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Location	Tanzania
Nearest city	Kigoma
Area	35 km² (14 sq mi)
Established	1968
Visitors	1854 (in 2012)
Governing body	Tanzania National Parks Authority

Gombe Stream National Park is a special national park located in north-western Tanzania. It's right next to Lake Tanganyika, a huge lake, and is a bit south of the border with Burundi. The city of Kigoma is about 20 kilometers (10 miles) south of the park.

Gombe was created in 1968. It's the smallest national park in Tanzania, covering only about 52 square kilometers (20 square miles) of forest. This forest stretches along the hills near the northern shore of Lake Tanganyika. The park has steep valleys and different kinds of plants. You can find everything from open grassland to tall alpine bamboo and thick tropical rainforest. You can only get to Gombe National Park by boat.

Amazing Animals of Gombe
- Chimpanzees: Gombe's Famous Residents
- Other Wildlife in Gombe
Images for kids
See also

Amazing Animals of Gombe

Chimpanzees: Gombe's Famous Residents

Gombe National Park is most famous because of Jane Goodall. She is a world-renowned scientist who spent many years studying the chimpanzee groups here. The Kasakela chimpanzee community, which you might have seen in books and documentaries, lives in Gombe Stream National Park.

Goodall made an important discovery: these apes regularly eat smaller monkeys. They work together to hunt, slowly trapping the monkeys so they can't escape. They hunt so much that it's quite amazing: Goodall's studies showed how much chimpanzees hunt. For example, one study found that a group of 45 chimps ate about a ton of monkey meat in a year! During one hunting spree, chimps killed 71 colobus monkeys in just 68 days. One chimp alone caught 42 monkeys over five years. Overall, chimps might hunt and eat about a third of the colobus monkey population in Gombe each year.

Other Wildlife in Gombe

Gombe Stream has many different kinds of animals, making it a popular place for tourists to visit. Besides chimpanzees, other primates living in Gombe Stream include beachcomber olive baboons, Red Colobus monkeys, and vervet monkeys.

The park is also home to over 200 different bird species and bushpigs. You can also find 11 types of snakes, and sometimes you might spot hippopotamus and leopards.

Visitors to the park can go on treks into the forest to see the chimpanzees. You can also swim and snorkel in Lake Tanganyika, where you'll find almost 100 kinds of colorful cichlid fish.