Millions of Locusts Headed for Darfur, Say Experts
Date: 12-Aug-04
Country: ITALY
Author: Phil Stewart
If locust swarms do hit, insecurity in the remote western region would prevent an effective control operation, they said.
"Swarms could get into Sudan any day, but we of course don't know when," said Clive Elliott, senior officer in charge of the locust group at the Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
"The FAO is in contact with the authorities in Sudan and our coordinators in Cairo are working with the countries around the Red Sea to get as prepared as possible for an invasion from the west," he said.
Elliott said he had no information to suggest locusts had already swept into Sudan, but a pest control expert in the region said they may have already hit.
"We have indications that swarms of locust devastating neighboring Chad may have also affected Sudan's western region of Darfur," Peter Odiyo, Director of the Addis Ababa-based Desert Locust Control Organization for East Africa (DLCO-EA) told Reuters.
"Since Darfur is considered as a war zone, DLCO-EA could not mount an air operation to control the plague. We cannot fly our planes into Darfur, because our aircraft are not insured to fly in war zones," he said.
LOCUSTS REACH NEIGHBORING CHAD
Odiyo said two major locust swarms had devastated areas of neighboring Chad, devouring crops in fields, vegetation and pastures.
He said the area affected in Chad is close to the border with Darfur, where Arab militias have clashed with rebels and attacked villagers in violence that has displaced more than one million people.
North and West Africa is facing its most serious locust crisis for 15 years, with swarms of desert locusts moving into Mauritania, Mali and Niger, where many of the inhabitants are subsistence farmers.
Desert locust swarms usually contain about 50 million insects per square kilometer and can travel up to 150 km (93 miles) a day. They can devastate entire crop fields in minutes, adult locusts munching their own weight, about two grams, of food a day.
Elliott said the last swarm spotted in Chad was on July 27 in Batha province, only about 400 km (250 miles) from the Sudanese border. He said the swarm was smaller than those seen in Mauritania, reaching only about 4 km in length.
"If they arrive in Darfur, they will eat anything green ... So if the farmers have planted their crops, and they are nicely sprouting, those crops will clearly be at risk," he said.
Odiyo said DLCO-EA was conducting constant aerial and ground survey along the railway linking Djibouti on Africa's horn to the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa which is considered breeding ground for locusts.
Odiyo said DLCO-EA owned five aircraft fitted with equipment to spray locust breeding areas.
(Additional reporting by Tsegaye Tadesse in Addis Ababa)
