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MAURITANIA: Locust alert in northwest - Tuesday, October 10, 2006 |
NOUAKCHOTT, 10 October (IRIN) - Swarms of desert locusts have been sighted in the remote northwest Mauritanian province Inchiri, 250 km west of the capital Nouakchott, raising fears of a locust invasion at the height of the growing season.
Just a small swarm of locusts can eat as much food in a day as 2,500 people.
According to the National Locust Centre of Mauritania, the locusts are currently in the mating stage and have been laying eggs, with hatchings expected to occur in the next 10 days.
"These first stages seem to indicate that these are locusts similar to those observed since the beginning of the year in different areas. We believe that they are a native species," Mohamed Abdalahi Ould Babah, director at the centre, said.
There is concern in Mauritania that this new batch of locusts will continue to spread. Vegetation is flourishing as the normally desert-country bristles with maize and sorghum crops at the end of a strong growing season. The affected zone has high levels of humidity which encourages locust breeding, experts said.
Three units of ground treatment and nine canvassing teams have been deployed, including five to the affected region, which is considered an area of prime grazing land for cattle breeders.
"A military plane has also been mobilised but at the moment the area requiring treatment is not large enough to warrant its use," said Ould Babah.
The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) is sending a helicopter to help survey larger areas that are difficult to reach by land.
"Adjacent countries have been alerted," said Wen Mullier of FAO in West Africa. Survey teams will be monitoring Senegal, Mali, Niger, and the southern parts of Morocco and Algeria, which all could potentially be affected.
The FAO said it will use the situation to do field trials of a bio-pesticide called Green Muscle.
A major outbreak of locusts in West Africa in 2004 stripped agricultural land throughout the desperately poor region at the height of the harvest season, leaving many of the region's subsistence farmers with nothing to eat for the year ahead.
Since January 2005, few locusts have been sighted in Mauritania and only a few hundred hectares of land have been treated.
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