The Kitobe
Forest is the headquarters of GOSESO and site for our environmental restoration,
research, and education. The entire Kitobe Forest is an expansive parcel of
fertile, mountainous miombo woodlands outside Gombe
Stream National Park and
Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania of which GOSESO has a legal ownership of significant
acreage in the heart of the forest.
The Kitobe Forest, like so many of the forests in the Lake Tanganyika Region, was once home to abundant wildlife including chimpanzees and lions, but now suffers from growing human populations. The continuous consumption of firewood to feed brick-kilns for home construction and cooking fires has devastated the forest itself and wreaked havoc on local water supplies namely in the Mungonya River, which flows from Gombe Stream National Park through the forest.
As forests outside Lake Tanganyika Region, like the Kitobe Forest, continue to decline, the forests of adjacent Gombe Stream National Park are also bearing immense pressures from human survival activities. Already, indigenous wildlife populations, notably the chimpanzee, are experiencing dramatic decline.
Volunteering proactive ideas and creative opportunities to curb the decline of Gombe’s surrounding forests, GOSESO has spearheaded an initiative to enlist and engage, at a grassroots level, the citizenry and local government in establishing the Kitobe Forest as a model for environmental education, restoration, research and economically sustainable enterprise.
The Kitobe Forest was selected as the headquarters of GOSESO because of it's proximity to Gombe Stream National Park and Lake Tanganyika, both of which provide unique opportunities for students and villagers to actively participate in conservation activities. The close proximity of the park and lake also enables GOSESO to link environmental research and education with sustainable livelihoods as a means of bridging the gap between human well-being and wildlife conservation.