Canary islands alert as locusts move in

Spanish authorities are on alert today after an unwelcome breed of tourist set up camp on the Canary Islands – locusts.

After devastating crops in North Africa this summer, thousands of the bugs have turned up on the islands just off north west Africa.

Officials say the situation is nowhere near infestation level, but they are taking no chances and declared a state of alert yesterday, shipping in 400 gallons of a powerful insecticide, harmful to animals and humans.

For the past two weeks helicopters have been patrolling the coasts of several islands in search of the kind of swarms that hit land stretching from Morocco to Egypt this summer. A small plane is flying similar patrols closer to the coast of Africa.

Pedro Rodriguez Zaragoza, the Canary Islands agriculture minister, travelled to one of the hardest-hit islands, Lanzarote, today and said that if strong, hot winds blowing in from Africa keep up, as forecast, officials may have to start spraying.

Lanzarote is only about 60 miles from the closest African territory, the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara. Locusts can travel twice that far in just a day.

Rodriguez Zaragoza said that for now the locust presence in the Canary Islands is insignificant. He was quoted by the newspaper El Pais as saying the recorded density was still less than 0.2 insects per square metre, while in some places in Africa the density was more than 12,000 per square metre.

Officials in the Canary Islands are worried because of a recent burst of warm weather that helps locusts mature.

An infestation of the bugs in El Ayoun, the Western Sahara capital, was so bad the airport there shut down two days ago because of poor visibility.