NOUAKCHOTT, 10 October (IRIN) - Swarms of desert locusts have been sighted in the remote northwest Mauritanian province Inchiri, 250 km west of the capital
Nouakchott, raising fears of a locust invasion at the height of the growing season.Just a small swarm of locusts can eat as much food in a day as 2,500 people.According to the National Locust
Centre of Mauritania, the locusts are currently in the mating stage and have been laying eggs, with hatchings expected to occur in the next 10 days."These first stages seem to indicate that these
are locusts similar to those observed since the beginning of the year in different areas. We believe that they are a native species," Mohamed Abdalahi Ould Babah, director at the centre, said.There
is concern in Mauritania that this new batch of locusts will continue to spread. Vegetation is flourishing as the normally desert-country bristles with maize and sorghum crops at the end of a strong
growing season. The affected zone has high levels of humidity which encourages locust breeding, experts said.Three units of ground treatment and nine canvassing teams have been deployed, including
five to the affected region, which is considered an area of prime grazing land for cattle breeders."A military plane has also been mobilised but at the moment the area requiring treatment is not
large enough to warrant its use," said Ould Babah. The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) is sending a helicopter to help survey larger areas that are difficult to reach by land. "Adjacent
countries have been alerted," said Wen Mullier of FAO in West Africa. Survey teams will be monitoring Senegal, Mali, Niger, and the southern parts of Morocco and Algeria, which all could potentially
be affected. The FAO said it will use the situation to do field trials of a bio-pesticide called Green Muscle.A major outbreak of locusts in West Africa in 2004 stripped agricultural land
throughout the desperately poor region at the height of the harvest season, leaving many of the region's subsistence farmers with nothing to eat for the year ahead.Since January 2005, few locusts
have been sighted in Mauritania and only a few hundred hectares of land have been treated.mpo/kdd/nr
