China to unleash quack troops on locust swarms
China plans to deploy a 100,000-strong army of ducks to help Pakistan combat a massive locust infestation.
Described by researchers as ‘‘biological weapons’’, they will be dispatched from the eastern province of Zhejiang; the result of a fact-finding mission by Chinese experts to their Asian neighbour, local media reported.
Desert locusts are sweeping though eastern Africa to South Asia in swarms of ‘‘biblical proportions’’, ravaging crops, devastating livestock pastures across vast areas and blackening the skies as they move.
Schistocerca gregaria is the world’s oldest migratory pest and is considered its most dangerous because of its voracious appetite. A single square kilometre of desert locusts can hold as many as 40 million individuals, and together they can gobble enough crops in a single day to feed 35,000 people, leaving famine in their wake in regions that may already have been facing food shortages.
The United Nations has warned that a fresh round of breeding will spawn new waves of locusts in the coming weeks. The pests are already mature and have laid their eggs. As the eggs hatch, the shorthorned grasshoppers are likely to cross into neighbouring countries. If unchecked, the locust numbers could swell 500 times by June, when drier weather is expected in the region.
‘‘In just a few weeks, the next generation of the pests will transition from their juvenile stage and take wing in a renewed frenzy of destructive swarm activity,’’ the UN said.
This week a swarm entered the Democratic Republic of Congo for the first time in 75 years, the UN food and agriculture agency said, warning of a ‘‘major hunger threat’’ in Africa’s affected region.
Kenya, Somalia and Uganda have been battling the worst locust outbreak in east Africa in 70 years. Swarms have also been sighted in Djibouti, Eritrea and Tanzania and recently reached South Sudan, home to some of the continent’s most vulnerable people. The UN has appealed for donations of more than £100 million (NZ$205m) to deliver aid to those who have lost their crops.
Trials of China’s duck response will begin in the coming months. The birds proved effective in fighting an invasion in the eastern province of Zhejiang in 2000. They would also prove cheaper and less harmful to the environment than pesticides, according to Lu Lizhi, from the Zhejiang academy of agricultural sciences, who is leading the project.
They are greedier and more biddable than chickens, he added. ‘‘Ducks like to stay in a group, so they’re easier to manage,’’ he said. ‘‘They have three times the combat capability.’’
Devouring locusts also makes for tastier meat and eggs, Lu added – hinting at the ultimate fate of the ducks after their tour of duty.
A changing climate has contributed to the latest outbreak, with a warming Indian Ocean spawning more powerful tropical cyclones in the region. A cyclone late last year in Somalia brought heavy rains that fed fresh vegetation to fuel the locusts that were carried in by the wind from the Arabian peninsula. – The Times