KOHAT: The wildlife department here has invited two teams of foreign farmers, currently visiting Haripur, to cull wild boars found in large number in posh KDA town of Kohat and areas near the hospitals and city outskirts. The boars have been destroying crops near Hangu Road, University Road and bypass road besides fields in Jarma area at night.

Director wildlife Samad Wazir told this correspondent that the teams of foreign farmers were in Haripur at present to hunt boars and take them away.

Wild boars pose a threat to the people who could not come out of their homes after evening, especially in KDA town.

“We have also informed them about the menace and they will visit Kohat after completing the operation in Haripur. We don’t have shooters and boars are in such a large number that if we give them poison it will be difficult to dispose of the carcasses. Therefore, it is feasible that the foreigners hunt and take the boars with them for eating,” Mr Wazir explained.

The growing number of boars has become a permanent nuisance and danger to the people’s lives in Hafizabad, guava-rich Jarwanda road area and KDA township.

The boars destroy wheat and maize crops on the Hangu, bypass and university roads in Jarma, according to former chairman of farmers committee Mian Shah Raza.

A resident of Abdullah Colony, Shah Faisal, said he was going to the KDA hospital in his car when a pig came out from an orchard and hit his car, damaging the front light and bumper. Similarly, people could not go to the KDA hospital in the night on foot where herds of boars roamed the road and hid in bushes.

Published in Dawn, October 3rd, 2020