Never Go To A Forest If Society Collapses: Park Rangers Encounter In Liberia

It's interesting to wonder how many of

you guys would consider going out to the

forest if society were to disappear or

vanish or somehow collapse.

Today's video I'm going to be sharing a

specific experience that a park ranger

called Emmanuel went through in the

1990s in Liberia.

Now, I've never featured a I think I

featured a few encounters outside of the

United States, but nearly all of them

are from my US-based viewers, who are

around 80 to 90% of my audience.

A lot of people would come out to a

forest if they felt more comfortable.

Maybe they knew how to do bushcraft or

survival. they are trained in it or have

done it since birth with their parents

and they would feel more comfortable

doing that. But in the interview that I

had with Emanuel, he talked me through

his experience being a ranger in the '9s

in Liberia during an extremely unstable

time in the country's history where

people were quite literally in a state

of civil unrest and collapse. People

were living as clans in the forest in

small pockets. Lots of people in

societies were, you know, committing

atrocious things and Emanuel was

witnessing everything firsthand

in regards to the forest because he was

the ranger of one of the forests in the

southern region

and this region of Liberia, the area he

was in. He explained in great detail to

me how eventually as things started to

progress and the faith in the local

establishment and the government

declined, people began acting up,

misbehaving, stealing from one another,

ignoring rules and the safety of others.

And the thing is with Emanuel's

situation, it's not like he can just

choose not to go into work anymore. He

still had a duty. And a park ranger in

Liberia or anywhere in Africa, it's not

quite the same as a park ranger in the

United States. You see, their job is

arguably a lot more stressful, a lot

more difficult. And hear me out. Their

job isn't necessarily to empty trash

cans or make sure the local cafe is full

of happy people on their hikes. Instead,

it's to stop people logging who

shouldn't be logging. It's to stop

people taking uh you know taking animals

who shouldn't be taking animals or

hunting them when they're not allowed

to. And that's where you see a lot of

these nature documentaries of the

rangers and the wardens out in Africa,

the different countries and they are

going out with uh you know they're going

out armed in these trucks and they're

catching what they call poachers.

So Emanuel was on the front line of 1990

and one thing he realized not only did

all this activity increase which made

his job very unsafe and a nightmare.

We're going to walk through bit by bit

how things gradually changed and the

experience and how he told it to me

leading on into more and more people

trying to live an off-grid life in clans

hunter gatherer style living. And I

thought, what better way to tell this

experience than to come straight out

into one of the most remote forests of

my entire region. So, ladies and

gentlemen, subscribe if you're new. And

yeah, let's get started.

In the late 1980s, things became very

unstable in Liberia. Before then, the

country was obviously in a lot of

conflict and things were very tough.

Emanuel was working in a specific region

as a park ranger with the job of trying

to reduce poaching, maintain the health

and safety of the wildlife and

endangered species around his

jurisdiction as they call it. He went

into work most mornings very early as

lots of the park rangers do. His job was

to make sure that there was no activity

going on around the area which would be

at detriment to the nature. You know, he

is a guardian or a warden of the land.

But as he began going into work, he soon

noticed obviously he was watching the

news. He was keeping an eye on the state

of his local towns, cities, villages,

rural areas. He realized something had

changed in people. Now, some of you may

know more about this than me. What

happened to Liberia? Maybe I have some

people who even were part of what

happened or witnessed things or lived

them like Emanuel. But whilst you wake

up, it's not like it's a click of a

fingers and it's like, "Oh, come on

family. We're going to live in the

forest because Walmart shut down. The

power's out." and they've got grids and

checkpoints everywhere with law

enforcement. That's not how it works. In

fact, it's very gradual. Even if the

grid and the power goes out very fast,

it still takes time. It's a knock-on

effect. There are backup systems and

emergency measures in place. And

obviously when that happens, it takes

weeks for the actual citizens in their

homes with their families to feel the

effect of something that may have

happened days, weeks, or even a month

ago, depending on how long the buffer

zone is between consequence, action, and

reaction.

Emanuel was starting to watch these

things unfolding, not just on the radio,

on the TV. He saw it in person. people

used to come and go on tours around the

uh area. Uh lots of tourists um but also

lots of locals would bring their

families to nature and would have a good

time. But as he began seeing things

changing, becoming more tougher, people

had no money to spend on going out and

enjoying these tours or these safaris as

they used to call them. His job pretty

much just then went on to focusing only

on stopping the unwanted activity within

the park. And that was the worst part of

his job that he told me he hated the

most was trying to stop these people who

were willing to basically get into

dangerous altercations

to make a living. You know, this was

what they did. It was a network of

individuals who would act in a way to

try and make money and take from the

nature. So whilst he was trying to do

his job during these years in the '90s,

it got more and more dangerous. Yes, he

had to use a weapon. Yes, he got in

multiple what should we say altercations

over the years or during this time there

was a particular month where he told me

about something that happened where he

actually caught some poachers. um almost

ended up losing his life as a result. It

was only him and a fellow colleague that

were there and there was a whole group

of them that had gone to a trap they had

put out and they got there just before

Emanuel and his colleague did and it

turned into a nightmare.

So as I'm saying this situation unfolded

very slowly and people were not coming

out not going to the forests they were

not enjoying family parks they became

survival and like the video yesterday

where I mentioned during lockdown we had

the same mindset here in the west people

stopped going out and going to clubs and

bars and cinemas and holiday parks and

even a lot of places in nature stopped

being hiked and tked

the world literally shut down. Well,

they had a mini version of this in

Liberia in the '90s where effectively

families knew it was so dangerous that

they stopped going out and they stopped

spending their money or what little

money they had.

It escalated pretty bad. Things started

to go from bad to worse. And he noticed

this around 3 years in to the

instability of uh local authorities

basically battling with different clans

and groups that were funded by god knows

who in in little groups and they were

trying to overthrow the people in

charge. There were different clans

battling each other. It was a hell hole.

It was horrific for the poor people

involved in the crossfire and it was

very very dangerous.

he realized that he started to see a lot