States-size locust swarm invades West Africa
Clouds of locusts swarmed the city of Nouakchott in Mauritania, which is twice the size of France, causing traffic accidents as sub-Sahara's biggest plague of the insects in more than a decade swept south from the desert.
Blankets of the insects covered houses, cars and roads. Neighbouring Mali said yesterday the swarms had spread across most of its vast arid territory.
Desperate farmers have been urged to burn, drown and stamp on the insects that can decimate whole fields in minutes.
"The situation is spreading. To start with it was just two or three regions. Now most of them are affected, particularly in the south," said Fakaba Diakite, co-ordinator of Mali's anti-locust centre.
The centre plans to deploy 18 teams by Monday to spray up to two million acres with pesticide. Algeria was flying in reinforcements with 4,000 gallons of chemicals. Desert locust swarms contain up to 200 million insects per square mile and can travel more than 80 miles a day.
They can devastate entire crop fields in minutes, with adult locusts munching their own weight, about two grams, of food a day.
The swarms are moving across the Sahara desert toward countries including Senegal, Niger, Chad and Gambia, many of whose inhabitants are subsistence farmers and whose governments lack the resources to fight the airborne invasion. "Even if today we received all the international aid we asked for, we can't be everywhere all the time," said Seydou Idrissa Traore, director of the rural affairs department at Mali's agriculture ministry.
Local radio stations had been asked to encourage listeners to take up "physical battle" against the insects. "That means digging pits because young larvae don't jump, they walk, so they'll fall into the holes and you can burn them. You can also attract them to water then drown them," he said.
"The physical battle means everything you can find to kill the maximum number of insects, even with your feet. We are getting everyone out - old people and kids armed with sticks."
The plague has also spread to Senegal, according to a team of experts sent by France's agronomical research centre CIRAD. President Abdoulaye Wade has cancelled his holiday and urged world leaders to declare war on the insects.
"The mission confirmed the gravity and intensity of the invasion by swarms in Mauritania and the potential risk for Senegal ... where the first concentrations have been observed," the French embassy in Dakar said in a statement.
Residents in Nouakchott compared the latest plague - which ate their main football pitch as well as the president's gardens - with the locust invasion of 1987-1989.
That plague was the worst in 30 years, sparking fears of famine and taking $300 million and 28 states to contain.
A locust can eat its own body weight - 2g - in 24 hours and a ton of locusts - a tiny part of the average swarm - can eat as much food in a day as 2,500 people.
There can be up to 40 billion locusts in one swarm nDuring one plague in Somalia, the locusts devoured enough food to feed 400,000 people for a whole year.
The swarm covered 1,000 square km.
In total, locusts can live for around 30 days. About 90% will die at the end of migration, although they will try to spawn first.
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