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 | |  |  | Worst invasion of locusts in more than a decade | Tip Rating:   |  |  | |  |
Mauritania is one of the hardest hit countries by the worst locust invasion in West Africa for 15 years. The locusts, which can eat their own weight n food each day, invaded the entire country.
The FAO warned that up to 50 percent of Mauritania's cereal production might be lost after swarms of locusts devoured their way through crops. The Mauritanian government faced a grain deficit of almost 190.000 tonnes during the year ahead. Around 1.6 million hectares of land were infested with the locusts at the height of the crisis in summer 2004.
Not only people lost their food. Also the 17 million camels, cows, sheep and goats, which many nomadic Mauritanians depend on for their livelihood, were under threat. Much of the desert pasture has been picked clean, leaving the nomadic herdsmen with shortages of grazing land for their animals.
The Mauritanian locust control programme moved into top action in October, when western donors brought more spray planes and insecticide. When we were in Mauritania in November most of the swarms had moved to the north into the Sahara desert, far away from the crop growing areas of southern Mauritania.
In the south we saw hardly any locust, only a few trees were covered with the red coloured locusts. In the north along the railway we saw one small swarm of locusts, resembling flying shrimps. Along the road to Nouadhibou we saw the most locusts, all dead problably by insecticide or by exhaustion after they reached the ocean. Leave a Comment
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on December 29, 2005
on November 2, 2004
on August 25, 2002
on August 25, 2002
on August 25, 2002
on August 24, 2002
on August 24, 2002
