Elephants Invade Town

Maryland County’s Superintendent Betsy Kuoh has been giving reason that may have resulted to elephants running through the Barobo Town of Jageloken in Maryland, southeast Liberia recently.

According to Superintendent Kuoh, the invasion of Jageloken Town by the elephants was the third of such incident. The animals reportedly ransacked the town and destroyed life-crops, while fleeing from heavy sounds of probable tree-felling in the forest by jobless residents.

She told UNMIL Radio’s Coffee Break show on Tuesday, 10 November that about two weeks ago, that another assumption Could be that someone may have been running after the animals, prompting them to run to town. She pointed fingers particularly at people who go into the forest with power-saw to cut down trees to produce planks.

She indicated that the heavy sounds may have created fears among the elephants in the forest. The return of elephants and other wild animals to the forests may have been a result of the warning by the Government of Liberia against hunting. For some times now, the forests of Liberia have been quiet from the sounds of hunting guns, enabling wild animals to return.

“We are talking about doing away with hunting; the animals too have life to live. So, you got lots of elephants now all over the place. Sometimes you are walking or driving, you see a big animals cross the roads,” she said the Superintendent of Maryland County.

Kuoh also noted that people in the region have been stay away from the forests and not disturb animals because they too have life to live like human beings. “But the problem is that even if the message is passed on to the people not to go into the forests and disturb the animals, they still go back because their way of life is to go into the bush, saw planks and sell them to earn living, even if they do not hunt,” she said.

“So, when you leave, they will go there to do it,” she said further, suggesting that “if they got something to do – like jobs; everybody knows that the economic situation in Maryland is too low so people are just doing their own things, sawing, and burning coal.”

Though Madam Kuoh indicated that the government was doing all it could, NGOs and other organizations were trying their best to hire people, there was still a serious problem in the region.

By Winston W. Parley-Edited by George Barpeen