[HCDX] locusts in Mauritania

["Mike Brooker" <aum108@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

The following may be of interest to those who can hear Mauritania on 4845 or
739.  If  you don't get a verie (I've been waiting since 1978 for reception
on 4845) maybe the locusts ate your report! :)


Locusts eat football pitch
Thu 5 August, 2004 02:12

NOUAKCHOTT (Reuters) - A massive locust swarm swept into the Mauritanian
capital Nouakchott, devouring trees, bushes and parts of the city's main
soccer pitch, residents say.

The city's inhabitants lit fires and rattled tin boxes filled with stones on
Wednesday to try to chase away the insects, which are swarming down from
North Africa and threaten to unleash the region's worst locust crisis for 15
years.

"The authorities have done nothing to stop this invasion. It'll destroy our
crops and make us poorer," said Diop, a young Mauritanian trying to protect
his city centre vegetable plot.

Desert locust swarms contain up to 80 million insects per square km and can
travel more than 80 miles a day. They can devastate entire crop fields in
minutes, with adult locusts munching their own weight, or about two grams,
of food a day.

Residents in Nouakchott compared the arrival of the pink-coloured swarm to
the locust invasion of 1987-89, which was the worst in 30 years and sparked
fears of famine. That plague took $300 million and operations in 28 states
to contain.

France has said it is sending a team of experts from agronomical research
centre CIRAD to Mauritania, Senegal, Mali and Niger -- all former French
colonies -- to assess the scale of the latest invasion.

European donors have contributed two million euros to beef up an emergency
fund run by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

http://tinyurl.com/3r57u


73

Mike Brooker
Toronto, ON

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