Gombe Stream National Park

Jane Goodall arrived in Tanzania on 14 July 1960, aged 26, to begin studying chimpanzees at Gombe with the support of the palaeontologist Louis Leakey. By the autumn of that year she had seen chimpanzees making and using tools, modifying twigs and grass stems to fish for termites, a discovery that challenged the long-held idea that only humans made tools. She went on to document chimpanzees hunting red colobus monkeys and the long bonds between mothers and their offspring, and lived at Gombe almost full time for some fifteen years.

Gombe became a national park in 1968, and the Gombe Stream Research Centre was established in 1967 to coordinate the work. The study has continued without a break ever since, making it the longest-running field study of wild chimpanzees in the world, with researchers following individual chimpanzees every day. The park supports three chimpanzee communities, Kasekela, Mitumba and Kalande. Jane Goodall died in 2025, and the research and conservation work carried out by the Jane Goodall Institute and Tanzanian scientists continues.

The lakeshore villages around Gombe and the town of Kigoma are home to fishing and farming communities, and wooden boats moving along the shore are a constant sight. Kigoma is the regional capital and lake port, with markets and boat connections to lakeside villages. The Jane Goodall Institute has worked with surrounding communities on conservation for around three decades, because the park alone is too small to secure the chimpanzees' future.