Mahale Mountains National Park, Eastern chimpanzee sanctuary in Western Tanzania

Mahale Mountains National Park covers 1,577 square kilometres on a peninsula on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika, in Uvinza District of Kigoma Region. Its terrain runs from 750 metres at the lakeside to Mount Nkungwe at 2,462 metres, with miombo woodland, tropical rainforest climbing to about 2,000 metres, and mountain grasslands breaking the forest.

The park was established in 1985 as a protected area in Western Tanzania with ties to long-standing human settlement patterns. Its creation marked a shift in how the region's natural resources were managed and accessed.

Traditional inhabitants of the Mahale mountains included two distinct groups, the Batongwe people with 22,000 members and the Holoholo people with 12,500 members.

The park lies about 150 km south of Kigoma on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika. It can be reached by road along the lakeshore in about five hours, by charter flight, or by ferry from Kigoma to Lagosa twice weekly, an eight- to ten-hour crossing sometimes served by the historic ship Liemba; speedboats take three to four hours. Inside the park there are no roads, so walking is the only way around. The dry season from June to October is the best visiting time.

A Japanese team led by researcher Nishida began habituating two chimpanzee groups here in the mid-1960s, and since the mid-1980s Michael Huffman of Kyoto University has studied chimpanzee use of medicinal plants. Around 800 chimpanzees live in the park, alongside five other monkey species and about 355 bird species.