Millions of locusts dying on Canary isle

One of Spain’s Canary Islands was crawling with an estimated 100 million locusts today, but officials said the insects were in poor condition after flying from Africa and strong winds were blowing them back out to sea.

The reddish, grasshopper-like insects stopped arriving on Monday after a weekend infestation that hit the islands of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, said Pedro Rodriguez Zaragoza, the agriculture minister of one of Europe’s top tourist destinations.

Exterminators fumigated Lanzarote over the weekend to kill an estimated two million locusts that landed near a village.

But no insecticide was needed to combat the 100-million-strong bulk which arrived on Fuerteventura as the insects were at the end of their life cycle and were in bad condition after their 60 mile flight from north-west Africa, Rodriguez Zaragoza said from the archipelago’s capital, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

“They only have about of week of life left,” he said, adding that the locusts were hardly eating any crops. ”Some have no wings and their legs are broken.”

Strong, hot winds that helped the insects fly across a stretch of the Atlantic have reversed course and are blowing the them back out to sea, he said.

The arrival followed an infestation that wreaked havoc on crops in North African countries over the summer.

Spanish officials say that in Mauritania alone, the insects ruined more than 2.5 million acres of crops.

Lanzarote is 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, and eat their weight in crops daily. An adult is about three inches long.