Mahale Mountains National Park

The remote and mysterious Mahale Mountains are overshadowed by a chain of wild, jungle-draped peaks that tower almost 2 kilometers above the shore. The area is also known as Nkungwe, after the park’s largest mountain, which is revered by the local Tongwe people and is the highest of the Mahale Range’s six prominent points at 2,460 meters (8,069 feet).

Mahale, like its northern neighbor Gombe Stream, is home to some of Africa’s last remaining wild chimpanzees, a population of about 800 that have been habituated to human visitors since the 1960s by a Japanese research project. Mahale’s Chimpanzee Tracking is a magical adventure. Mahale Mountains is a remote location on the western outskirts of the park that offers unrivaled opportunities to see wild groups of habituated and non-habituated chimps in a spectacular natural setting.

Animals in the wild

A Mahale safari includes seeing a diverse forest fauna, including easily observed troops of red colobus, red-tailed and blue monkeys, and a kaleidoscopic array of colorful forest birds and butterflies, in addition to chimpanzees. Warthog and bushpig forage in the montane rainforest belt, while elephants, buffalo, yellow baboons, and monkeys prefer the northern regions’ cover. In the shadow of leopards and lions, the lower, southern reaches are home to rare roan and sable antelope, kudu and eland.