As dawn broke in central Kenya, a helicopter lifted off in a race to find roosting locusts before the sun warmed their bodies and sent them on a ravenous flight through farmland.
Pilot Kieran Allen began his painstaking survey from zebra-filled plains and lush maize farms, to dramatic forested valleys and the vast arid expanses further north, his eyes scouring the landscape for signs of the massed insects.
The chopper suddenly swung around after a call came in from the locust war room on the ground: a community in the foothills of Mount Kenya has reported a swarm.
Photo: AFP
“I am seeing some pink in the trees,” his voice crackled over the headphones, pointing to a roughly 30-hectare swathe of desert locusts.
Reddish-pink in their immature — and hungriest — phase, the insects smothered the tips of a pine forest.
Allen determined that nearby farms were at a safe distance and called in a second aircraft, which arrived in minutes to spray the swarm with pesticide.
On the ground, having warmed to just the right temperature, the thick cloud of locusts filled the air with a rustling akin to light rainfall.
However, in a few hours, many would be dead from the effect of the poison.
Last month alone, Allen logged almost 25,000km of flight — more than half the circumference of the world — in his hunt for locusts after a fresh wave of insects invaded Kenya from Somalia and Ethiopia.
Like other pilots involved in the operation — who have switched from their usual business of firefighting, tourism, or rescuing hikers in distress — he has become an expert on locusts and the dangers they pose.
“Those wheat fields feed a lot of the country. It would be a disaster if they got in there,” he said, pointing to a vast farm in a particularly fertile area of Mount Kenya.
Desert locusts are a part of the grasshopper family that form massive swarms when breeding is spurred by good rains.
They are notoriously difficult to control, for they move up to 150km daily. Each locust eats its weight in vegetation daily and multiplies 20-fold every three months.
The locusts first infested the east and Horn of Africa in the middle of 2019, eventually invading nine countries as the region experienced one of its wettest rainy seasons in decades.
Some countries like Kenya had not seen the pest in up to 70 years and the initial response was hampered by poor coordination, lack of pesticides and aircraft, said Cyril Ferrand, a Nairobi-based expert with the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
A slick new operation to combat a second wave of the pests has improved control and cooperation in Kenya, Ethiopia and parts of Somalia.
In Kenya, the FAO has teamed up with the company 51 Degrees, which specializes in managing protected areas.
It has rejigged software developed for tracking poaching, injured wildlife and illegal logging and other conservation needs to instead trace and tackle locust swarms.
A hotline takes calls from village chiefs or some of the 3,000 trained scouts, and aircraft are dispatched.
Data on the size of the swarms and direction of travel are shared with the pilots as well as governments and organizations battling the invasion in Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia.
“Our approach has completely been changed by good data, by timely data, and by accurate data,” 51 Degrees director Batian Craig said.
The operation in Kenya had focused on a “first line of defense” in remote and sometimes hostile border areas, which had successfully broken up massive swarms coming in from Ethiopia and Somalia before they reach farmland further south, he said.
In a complex relay, when the wind shifts and the swarms head back into Ethiopia, pilots waiting on the other side of the border take over the operation.
Southern and central Somalia is a no-go zone due to the presence of al-Shabaab militants and the teams can only wait for the swarms to cross over.
Ferrand told reporters that last year the infestation affected the food supply and livelihoods of about 2.5 million people, and was expected to affect 3.5 million this year.
While a forecast of below-average rainfall and the improved control operation could help curb the infestation, it was difficult to say when it would end, he said.
Crowds in Bangladesh are flocking to snap photographs with an unlikely social media star — an albino buffalo with flowing blond hair nicknamed “Donald Trump” that is due to be sacrificed within days. Owner Zia Uddin Mridha, 38, said his brother named the 700kg bull over its flowing helmet of hair resembling the signature look of the US president. “My younger brother picked this name because of the buffalo’s extraordinary hair,” he said at his farm in Narayanganj, just outside the capital, Dhaka. Mridha said that a constant stream of curious visitors — social media fans, onlookers and children — have come throughout
It began as a satirical online project. Now millions of young people in India are flocking to it as an outlet for their frustration. A parody political party called the Cockroach Janta Party, with the insect as its symbol, has exploded across India’s social media by turning absurdist humor into protest. Memes and short videos mocking corruption, joblessness and political dysfunction have flooded social media sites, where millions of users are embracing the cockroach — known for its ability to survive harsh conditions — as a tongue-in-cheek symbol of endurance. The online movement’s rise has been unusually rapid. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)
HOTTER: While Indians are accustomed to summer heat, climate change has caused northwestern India to warm faster than other parts of the country, an academic said Roads and markets have emptied during afternoons and some farmers have switched to nighttime work to avoid scorching temperatures as a heat wave grips large parts of India. The India Meteorological Department forecast maximum temperatures for yesterday of about 45°C in the capital, New Delhi, where authorities have opened temporary “cooling zones” to help people cope. The weather department warned that conditions would likely persist across several northern regions in the coming days, with temperatures staying well above seasonal averages. Authorities urged people to stay indoors during the hottest hours and take precautions against heat-related illnesses. India declares a heat wave whenever maximum temperatures
A Hong Kong astronaut is to join a Chinese space mission for the first time as part of a three-person crew launching today, as Beijing edges closer to its goal of landing people on the moon. The Tiangong space station — crewed by teams of three astronauts that are typically rotated every six months — is the crown jewel of China’s space program, boosted by billions in state investment in a bid to catch up with the US and Russia. The Shenzhou-23 mission is to blast off at 11:08pm from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, carrying three astronauts to
RSS