Tracking Uganda’s Chimpanzees: Kibale Forest’s Record Troop

By Safari News — Africa Calling Safaris, Partner desk, Nairobi · 01/11/2026

Kibale National Park in southwestern Uganda is home to East Africa’s densest chimpanzee population, with roughly 1,500 individuals across 13 habituated communities. Among them, the Ngogo group, numbering over 200 members, is recognised as the largest known chimpanzee social unit in the world. The forest also shelters red-tailed and L’Hoest’s monkeys, olive and black-and-white colobus, and forest elephants, giving it exceptional primate diversity.

Trackers locate chimps by their calls, audible up to two kilometres away, and visitor groups are capped at eight people per community. Encounters, which can last up to an hour, reveal grooming, play, feeding and dominance displays, with chimpanzees moving between forest floor and high canopy. Sighting success runs near 90 percent, among the highest rates in great ape tourism. “Nothing in thirty years of guiding has prepared me the first time I saw a chimpanzee look at me,” says Nikos Pocock, head guide and co-founder of Africa Calling Safaris.

Permits cost USD 200–250 and should be secured six to twelve months ahead for peak months of June–August and December–January, through the Uganda Wildlife Authority; shoulder-season availability can open four to six weeks out. A short flight connects Nairobi to Uganda, making a three to four night extension combining Kibale with Bwindi’s gorilla trekking (USD 700 permits) a natural pairing with a Kenya savannah safari. Travellers routing from Europe or the Caucasus typically connect via Nairobi or Addis Ababa before the onward hop to Entebbe.

Based on reporting by Safari News, the travel desk of Africa Calling Safaris (Nairobi), GTour’s partner for East Africa. Read the original there.