Somalia Declares Emergency Over Locust Swarms

[appalachiablue]

Source: BBC News

Somalia has declared a national emergency as large swarms of locusts spread across east Africa. The country's Ministry of Agriculture said the insects, which consume large amounts of vegetation, posed "a major threat to Somalia's fragile food security situation".

There are fears that the situation may not be brought under control before the harvest begins in April. The UN says the swarms are the largest in Somalia and Ethiopia in 25 years. Meanwhile, neighbouring Kenya has not seen a locust threat as severe in 70 years, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

However, Somalia is the first country in the region to declare an emergency over the infestation. ◾Drones tested to combat desert locusts. Somalia's unstable security situation means that planes cannot be used to spray insecticide from the air.

Locusts can travel up to 150km (93 miles) in a day. Each adult insect can eat its own weight in food daily. In December, a locust swarm forced a passenger plane off course in Ethiopia. Insects smashed into the engines, windshield and nose, but the aircraft was able to land safely in the capital, Addis Ababa...SEE Video.


Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-51348517

---

- The UN says the situation in the Horn of Africa is the worst in 25 years.

[lastlib]

1. Yuck! I feel for those people!

We have the same thing here, we just call them republikans.

[saidsimplesimon]

2. Climate change fuels locust invasion-starvation for many

https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/ap-explains-how-climate-change-feeds-africa-locust-invasion/ar-BBZg3Ep

AP Explains: How climate change feeds Africa locust invasion

Associated Press
1/24/20
By CARA ANNA

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Locusts by the millions are nibbling their way across a large part of Africa in the worst outbreak some places have seen in 70 years. Is this another effect of a changing climate? Yes, researchers say. An unprecedented food security crisis may be the result. photos at link)

© Provided by Associated Press In this photo taken Thursday, Jan. 16, 2020, a Samburu boy uses a wooden stick to try to swat a swarm of desert locusts filling the air, as he herds his camel near the village of Sissia, in Samburu county, Kenya. The most serious outbreak of desert locusts in 25 years is spreading across East Africa and posing an unprecedented threat to food security in some of the world's most vulnerable countries, authorities say, with unusual climate conditions partly to blame. (AP Photo/Patrick Ngugi)

The locusts "reproduce rapidly and, if left unchecked, their current numbers could grow 500 times by June,” the United Nations says.

….snip slides and photographs available at link
The swarms of desert locusts hang like shimmering dark clouds on the horizon as they scour the countryside in what are already some of the world’s most vulnerable countries, including Somalia. Roughly the length of a finger, the whirring insects in huge numbers have destroyed hundreds of square kilometers (miles) of vegetation and forced people in some areas to bodily wade through them.
…snip
HOW IS CLIMATE CHANGE INVOLVED?
Heavy rains in East Africa made 2019 one of the region’s wettest years on record, said Nairobi-based climate scientist Abubakr Salih Babiker. He blamed rapidly warming waters in the Indian Ocean off Africa’s eastern coast, which also spawned an unusual number of strong tropical cyclones off Africa last year.
Heavy rainfall and warmer temperatures are favorable conditions for locust breeding and in this case the conditions have become “exceptional,” he said.
…snip
Rodney Muhumuza in Kampala, Uganda contributed.

[Marthe48]

3. Too bad they aren't honey bees

n/t

[Farmer-Rick]

4. It was my understanding that lots of breeding grasshoppers

By themselves did not cause locusts swarms. It's when they are overcrowded and rubbing up against each other that causes the swarming.

One of the largest locusts swarms ever record was in the southeast US, in and around east TN. It can happen here too.

[dalton99a]

5. The 1874 infestation by Rocky Mountain locusts was probably the worst in U.S. history

The U.S. Signal Corps estimated that the swarm was 1,800 miles long and at least 110 miles wide, and infested an estimated 2 million square miles.

https://www.historynet.com/1874-the-year-of-the-locust.htm
https://timeline.com/in-the-1870s-12-trillion-locusts-devastated-the-great-plains-and-then-they-went-extinct-6f7c51a15d90

[msongs]

6. fried grasshoppers, used to eat those in texas way long time ago nt

[TexasBushwhacker]

11. How were they?

Were they just fried plain or were they breaded in something?

[packman]

7. First the locust Plagues - then the rest of the ancient plaques of Egypt

Frogs, flies, rivers into blood, etc. As if the Repukes aren't bad enough.

[appalachiablue]

9. My thoughts as well and horrifying, not funny!

Medieval Danse Macabre

[appalachiablue]

10. Report on locusts in East Africa (DW)

[Maxheader]

8. Ways to beat the bug..

Spread out some food, such as bran, that grasshoppers and locusts like to eat and spray that food with neem or another natural insecticide. When the locusts or grasshoppers eat the food, they are poisoned. You can make the trap even more attractive by adding a little molasses to the food.