Jane Goodall Research Area, Gombe

What the name refers to

Jane Goodall began the chimpanzee study at Gombe in 1960, and TANAPA’s own park record credits that research with demonstrating the importance of conserving the habitat and driving the park’s gazettement in 1968. It is one of the longest continuous studies of any wild animal population anywhere.

There is, however, no TANAPA feature called the Jane Goodall Chimpanzee Research Area. What the authority actually names, on its park map and in its brochure, is a set of places in one valley system: Kasekela, which carries the park’s tourism centre and is where entry formalities are handled; a feeding station just below it; Jane’s Peak, a hill on the ridge above; and a Jane Goodall Memorial rest house, one of four rest houses TANAPA lists for visitor accommodation alongside Kasekela, Mitumba and the Gombe visitor centre.

Taken together those are what an itinerary means by the research area. Knowing the individual names is useful, because they are what signs, radios and guides at Gombe actually use.

What you can and cannot see

This is a working scientific operation, not an exhibit. There is no visitor tour of the research, no laboratory to look round and no guarantee of meeting anyone doing it. What a visitor gets is the trek itself, the walk up to Jane’s Peak for the view over the lake and the ridges, and the knowledge that the animals being followed are among the most thoroughly documented wild individuals on earth.

That last part is not nothing. Chimpanzees here have known names, known mothers and known life histories going back decades, and a guide who can tell you whose son you are looking at changes the hour completely. See the chimpanzee trekking guide and the primate watching guide.

The rules, specifically

TANAPA publishes its chimpanzee viewing regulations and they are enforced rather than advisory. The published set is: keep at least ten metres from the chimpanzees at all times; wear the mask your guide provides over nose and mouth when within fifty metres of one; do not eat or drink near them; do not put personal belongings on the ground; cover your nose and mouth if you need to cough or sneeze; do not use a bush toilet in the forest; do not visit if you are sick or have an infectious disease; no one under twelve years old may visit the chimpanzees; no more than six visitors plus one guide may be close to them at any one time; and maximum viewing time is one hour.

The reason for all of it is a single fact: chimpanzees catch human respiratory infections and die of them at rates people do not. The rules at Gombe exist because that has happened. The conservation tours guide covers the wider picture of what visitor pressure does at habituated primate sites.

Common questions