Locusts swarm into Egypt in Biblical Proportions.

[MrSelf]

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- For the first time in 50 years, millions -- potentially billions -- of locusts have swarmed into Cairo, posing a possible threat to the country's agriculture industry and prompting authorities to initiate a pesticide-fueled eradication program.

At midday Wednesday, the red insects, about seven centimeters (2.75 inches) long, could be seen flitting high in the sky, some landing on rooftops, hopping around. By the evening, the skies were empty of the locusts.

Christian Pantenius, program coordinator of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization office in Egypt, said strong southerly winds blew swarms of desert locusts, whose scientific name is schistocerca, into the Nile Delta region and further afield to the capital, Cairo, on Wednesday.

Pantenius said it is the first time locusts in such numbers have hit Cairo since the 1950s. Small numbers of the ravenous insects were spotted in Egypt during a locust plague that struck countries from eastern to western African between 1986-89.

"People are very afraid that it (the locust swarm) may cause damage to agricultural production, but to what extent the agricultural sector could be damaged is difficult to say," Pantenius told The Associated Press.

Egypt's Ministry of Agriculture held a hastily convened press conference to warn of the locusts and describe the measures being taken to eradicate the insects in a bid to curtail potential damage to the country's agricultural sector.

Agriculture Minister Ahmed el-Leithy told reporters the locusts posed no threat to humans or crops "because the swarms are continuing to move and are not fully grown."

El-Leithy said there are 50 locust eradication teams using "all available pesticides and equipment in all Egyptian provinces in cooperation and coordination with FAO experts on fighting locusts."

Abdullah Jah el-Rasoul, an Agricultural Ministry engineer, was quoted by the semiofficial Middle East News Agency as saying the pesticides being used to fight the locusts are "safe, health-wise" for humans, sold widely and are used to protect cotton and vegetables from insect infestations.

Pantenius, the U.N. official, warned that all "pesticides have the potential to harm people, which is why they have to be applied as carefully as possible."

Farmers unarmed with pesticides have begun using other means to try ward of the pests, such as lighting fires to produce smoke or making loud noises with machinery and other instruments.

According to Pantenius, the locusts originated in West Africa and were blown by northerly winds across the Sahara Desert through Libya to the northern Mediterranean, where the insects were spotted in large numbers in Crete and Lebanon.

Southerly winds pushed what the U.N. official described as a "medium density swarm of locusts numbering several million, if not a billion" into Egypt, covering several square kilometers (miles).

Egyptian authorities are tracking the movement of the locusts and targeting areas, particularly in the fertile Nile Delta, to try kill the pests.

Pantenius said the locusts have so far shown no signs of progressing further south along the agriculturally rich Nile River valley, and instead believes they will move in a southeasterly direction toward the Red Sea coast, an annual locust breeding ground between November and March.

To break the locusts' life cycle, Pantenius said it is essential for authorities to isolate and kill the swarm and find the breeding sites of the baby insects to prevent them from hatching.

Pantenius said the FAO is working with Egyptian authorities to help map the movement of locusts and deal with potential donor states in case there is any negative effect to the country's agricultural industry.

Huge locust swarms are still present in Mauritania and Niger, but the insects have begun moving northward in search of food. They've reached the Maghreb region of North Africa, which includes Morocco and Algeria. The FAO said locusts will plague western and northern Africa for several years.

Locusts normally live between two and six months and resemble flying grasshoppers and eat their weight -- about 2 grams, or 0.07 ounces -- in crops every day. Swarms can number in the billions and travel 200 kilometers (120 miles) a day, according to the FAO.



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[MrSelf]

Locust swarm canary islands as well....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4056525.stm

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[Red Squirrel]

That whole situation sounds familiar...

Archived topic from Anythingforums, old topic ID:1329, old post ID:17210

[MrSelf]

hmmm....

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