Nouakchott — [ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]
The Mauritanian government has launched an international appeal for US$ 5.6 million to help it spray vast areas of the desert country that have been invaded by swarms of locusts from North Africa.
Ahmedou Ould Ahmedou, the Mauritanian Minister of Rural Development told the representatives of donor countries, the European Union and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) at a meeting on Sunday that the money was needed to hire crop spraying planes and buy pesticide to spray an estimated 300,000 hectares.
"If it is not sufficiently controlled, an invasion on this scale could provoke an unprecedented crisis", the Mauritanian government news agency quoted Ould Ahmedou as saying.
The minister said up to 500,000, or even 800,000 hectares might eventually have to be sprayed to control the plague of insects which has invaded Mauritania since mid-June.
"Over the last month, nearly 50 locust swarms have been observed on Mauritanian territory," Mohamed Lemine, an FAO official seconded to the crop protection service of Mauritania's Ministry of Agriculture, told IRIN on Monday.
"Yesterday and today, major damage was recorded in the Adrar oasis, in the North of the country, where the harvest is under way, with the locusts eating the entire crop in some cases and parts of in others", he added.
In Mauritania so far, the government has succeeded in mobilising seven ground-based treatment and prospection teams and two military planes for detecting and spraying swarms of locusts, but Lemine said these resources were grossly inadequate for the task at hand.
Each day locusts eat the equivalent of their own weight - two grammes. They munch away on crops grown for human consumption as well as trees and grazing land.
The locust upsurge started in the Sahel last summer when breeding was encouraged by extremely heavy rainfall. The insects then headed north across the Sahara to Morocco and Algeria, but are now making their way back south as this year's rainy season starts to turn the southern fringes of the desert green again.
After Mauritania, swarms have been arriving in neighbouring Mali, and Senegal.
"With the rains that started late, the conditions are now favourable for the locust to reproduce along the Sahelian belt as far as Mali," Lemine said. " Yesterday, a swarm flew across a Mauritanian village, seven km from the Malian border, and headed towards Mali", he added.
Malian officials said swarms of locusts had also been spotted moving into the northeast of the country from Algeria.
"In the north of Mali, we have registered close to 40 locust swarms since April", Diakite Fakabo, the Director of the Mali Crop Protection Division of the Ministry of Agriculture told IRIN in Bamako.
"The last major swarm entered Gao, (on the northern bend of the Niger river) on 13 July. It spread over 15 square kilometres and comprised 150 million insects", he added.
In Senegal, the situation is worrying too.
"On 14, 15 and 16 July, we registered swarms in the Matam and Bakel departments, in the north of the country", Me Ndene Lo, the Agriculture Ministry official in charge of crop protection, told IRIN.
In both areas, almost 1,000 hectares were treated, but Senegal feared worse to come, he said.
The authorities in Dakar reckon they will need to spray a minimum of 100,000 hectares against locusts at an estimated cost of US$ 3.6 million, but the government's worst scenario sees a need to spray 300,000 hectares at a cost of more than US$10 million.
In Mali, where a National Unit to Fight Locusts was created in May 2002, the government says it lacks human, material and financial means to tackle the latest plague, which according to FAO experts, could be the worst to hit the Sahel in 15 years.
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The Malian government reckons that in a best case scenario it will need nearly US$1 million to spray 100,000 hectares of land invaded by locust swarms. But its worst case scenario calls for US$10 million to spray 800,000 hectares.
The Agriculture Ministry said that meant it would need at least 100,000 litres of insecticide.
"Up till now, Mali has only managed to obtain 5,000 litres of pesticide which were given by the Kingdom of Morocco, but we need twenty times more", Fakabo told IRIN.
"The FAO committed to buy 13,500 litres and the Malian state a further 5,000 litres more. We can only appeal to donors for the rest", Fakabo added.
"If the means are made available in time, we will be able to contain the swarms as we did last year", the Malian official said. "But if the response is slow in coming, we will suffer a general infestation which will get out of control".
