By Hassan I. Conteh

The mountains on the Benguema Military Barracks, Tombo, John Obey, Tokeh, Black Johnson, Angola, York, in the Western Area Rural District rapidly face serious extinction by people who are busy constructing homes on the mountains top.

Africa 24 newspaper journalist observes a “mad rush” of people who go about making houses for dwelling purposes or otherwise, on the peninsula range.

Not only homes are being built on the mountains’ foot and on their top but also some kind of factories could be seen erected by some private individuals.

For example, the range mountains’ soils known as rural peninsula in York, Lakkah, Bureh, Black Johnson, John Obey, Tombo, Benguema, Waterloo at Grassfied, are being cut down by bulldozers and by men who use handheld tools like pick axes, thereby creating way for homes and other buildings to be constructed.

Also the army missile firing ground at the Benguema Barracks known as range is covered with new houses, an area which is supposed to be protected by the government.

The mountains are ranges that form the Peninsula mountains of Sierra Leone.

They stretch from Waterloo, Tokeh and to many other communities in the Western Area Rural District and to the capital Freetown.

Historically, the belts rising mountains looked like a relaxing lion or some sleeping lions and lionesses lying across Freetown’s above sea level land to the eyes of an European Portuguese sea explorer.

The country earned its name, years back since 1462, from that powerful lion-like image, as it was called Sierra Lyoa then by the Portuguese explorer, Pedro da Citra, but changed to today’s English name pronounced as Sierra Leone.

To protect the historic mountains from being destroyed rapidly, Residents in Waterloo however are calling on the government to speedily take action by stopping people from building homes on the prohibited top mountain belts and from building houses below the range area where the army are conducting their usual testing operations.