The Kitobe Forest is the headquarters
of GOSESO and site for our environmental restoration, research, and education.
The entire Kitobe Forest is a 3,000-acre parcel of fertile, mountainous miombo
woodlands outside Gombe Stream National Park and Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania
of which GOSESO has a legal ownership of approximately 500 acres 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 heart of the Kitobe Forest. The Mungonya River is currently acting as the only wildlife corridor linking Kitobe Forest and Gombe Stream National Park on the east side of the park.
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 for the following reasons:
Kitobe Forest’s proximity to Gombe Stream National Park provides a unique opportunity for students and villagers to actively participate in the enhancement and restoration of this unique resource.
Proximity to Lake Tanganyika provides opportunities for geography and ecosystem studies offered through our village outreach programs.
The proximity to the park and lake enables GOSESO to link environmental research and education with community development as a means of bridging the gap between human well-being and wildlife conservation.
Kitobe Forest provides a unique location for a Wildlife Education Center that educates local people about the various diseases and threats facing wildlife, their feeding and movement patterns, wildlife ecology and management techniques, and how the environment can shape both human and wildlife behavior.