Environmental peoblems

With thanks to the Extinction Protocol

Madagascar allocates resources to fight locust plague

September 27, 2013 – MADAGASCAR – More than a year after a locust plague was declared in Madagascar, a control program finally is about to begin. Massive swarms of the insects have damaged or destroyed large areas of cropland and pastures. Aerial and ground surveys are underway in Madagascar to map the locations of the Malagasy migratory locust swarms. Annie Monard, locust response coordinator for the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, currently is in Madagascar. Monard was among those who sounded the alarm over a year ago. It is a plague – no doubt concerning that. It’s a plague because numerous locust swarms escaped the outbreak area. The declaration of plague was made in April 2012.” Despite the announcement of a locust emergency, the response was slow to develop. That allowed the swarms to spread even further from the southwest where they’re endemic.  The problem began several years earlier when the last control program – funded by the African Development Bank – ended. The FAO launched emergency campaigns in 2010, 2011 and 2012, but they were not enough to stop the locust plague from developing. “What we did and what FAO does for many, many years is always to promote what we call preventive control strategy. Unfortunately, there are always some situations during which it is not possible to apply the preventive strategy; and progressively the locust situation deteriorated, arising at the level we have now,” she said.  

Then late last year, Monard said Madagascar’s agriculture minister requested the FAO’s help in developing a new spraying campaign. That is now scheduled to be conducted in three stages, between October of this year and September 2016. Total cost of the three-year campaign is over $41-million. “For the time being, we got from a wide range of donors the budget for the first year. But we have still to advocate and to get the budget for the two following campaigns, which will allow us and allow the country to go back to a recession situation,” she said.  The FAO has raised $23 million dollars for the first year of the campaign.  The focus of the spraying will be on hopper bands, when the locusts are still wingless. Hoppers are more sensitive to pesticides that are less harmful to the environment, including those that contain a fungus. Besides spraying hoppers directly, pesticides will be used to create barriers or buffer zones. This is done by spraying the ground every 600 to 800 meters.  It’s estimated that of the 13 million people at risk, about nine million are directly dependent on agriculture for food and income. In some regions, 70 percent of the rice and maize crops have been damaged. As the control program gets underway, the locusts are expected to move to the north where the more productive agricultural lands are located.

–VOA

28 killed, hundred injured by swarms of giant hornets in China

  

September 26, 2013 – CHINA - Twenty-eight people have died and hundreds have been injured in a wave of attacks by giant hornets in central China, according to reports. Victims described being chased for hundreds of meters by the creatures and stung as many as 200 times. Most of the attacks in the past three months were in remote, rural, wooded areas in southern Shaanxi, the province’s China Business newspaper reported. In the city of Ankang alone, 18 people have died from the stings, health official Zhou Yuanhong told Associated Press. People in the cities of Hanzhong and Shangluo have also been injured. The insects’ highly toxic stings can lead to anaphylactic shock and renal failure. An official from Ankang’s disease control centre urged people to seek medical help if they received more than 10 stings, and warned that emergency treatment was required for those stung more than 30 times. One woman in her 50s said she had spent almost a month in hospital and was still incontinent after receiving more than 200 stings. A man from her village died of kidney failure.

The hornet attacks are a recurring problem in the area from May to as late as November. According to Ankang police, 36 people died in the city and 715 were injured by the creatures between 2002 and 2005. But Zhou said the issue had been particularly severe this year, possibly because of weather changes. Experts have suggested in the past that warmer temperatures in the area have led to hornets breeding more successfully, that laborers have been moving deeper into areas where they may disturb nests, and that the insects are sensitive to chemicals found in food and cosmetics. Li Jiuzhou, deputy director of the Shaanxi Bee and Wasp Industry Association, said that hundreds or even thousands of hornets could live in a single nest. They attack humans only if disturbed, he added. But they are carnivorous and can quickly destroy bee colonies. Ankang’s fire service has removed over 300 hornet nests this summer, but experts said that the problem was unlikely to end entirely until the temperature drops. Wang Zhengcai, an official from one of the affected villages, said authorities had warned people to be careful if they enter the woods. Local authorities have also promised to help patients pay for the treatment, because of the heavy cost for the rural poor. The culprit appears to be the Asian giant hornet or Vespa mandarinia, which grows up to 5cm long with a 6mm sting, although the area is also home to the smaller Asian hornet, Vespa velutina nigrithorax.

–The Guardian

Climate change

Climate change is spreading crop-damaging pests to higher latitudes, study says

Crop-damaging pests are moving towards the poles at a rate of more than 25 kilometres a decade, aided by global warming and human transport, posing a potential threat to world food security, a study showed on Sunday

The mountain pine beetle is a chronic pest to the North American forestry sector.

Globe and Mail,

1 September, 2013

The spread of beetles, moths, bacteria, worms, funghi and other pests in a warming world may be quicker than for many types of wild animals and plants, perhaps because people are accidentally moving them with harvests, it said.

Scientists based in Britain studied more than 600 types of pests around the world and found that their ranges shifted on average towards the poles by 26.6 km per decade since the 1960s, occupying vast new areas.

“We believe the spread is driven to a large degree by global warming,” lead author Daniel Bebber of Exeter University told Reuters of the findings in the journal Nature Climate Change. They wrote it was the first study to estimate how pests are moving because of a changing climate.

The spread of pests is “a growing threat to global food security,” the study said. Between 10 and 16 per cent of crop production is lost to pests, with similar losses after harvest, they wrote.

The rate of spread, away from the equator and towards the north and south poles, is slightly faster than 17.6 km found in a study in 2011 for wild animals and plants that was in turn quicker than 6.1 km for wildlife estimated in a 2003 study.

The rate, however, is virtually identical to a theoretical prediction in 2011 that rising temperatures would allow a poleward shift of wildlife of 27.3 km a decade, the experts wrote. Many crops are growing nearer the poles due to warming.

Researchers say crop pests are moving into new areas at a quicker rate than their predators, meaning they can do more damage to crops.

Wild species may find it harder to move because their habitats are getting fragmented by deforestation, farms, roads or cities. “Pest species are constantly being shifted around the world by trade. …We are giving them a helping hand,” Bebber said.

“I’m not surprised,” by the faster rate than for wild animals and plants, said Gary Yohe, a professor at Wesleyan University in the United States who was co-author of the 2003 study that put the average pole wards shift at 6.1 km.

A tiny pest is more likely than the average animal or plant to be carried inadvertently be taken on an train, truck or airplane to a new area, he noted. And he said the 2003 study was conservative.

Another possibility is that the rate of movement by wildlife “has really speeded up” in recent decades, said Michael Singer, a professor who works at both Plymouth University in England and the University of Texas.

And some insects pests may be getting more mobile since they are often forced to move by humans. “They have to be mobile because humans are constantly ploughing or otherwise modifying their habitats,” Singer said.

Sunday’s study said that there were many problems in determining how far climate was driving the pests’ movements.

“New crop varieties and agricultural technologies have extended the agricultural margin northward in the United States and deforestation has increased production in the tropics, thus providing new opportunities for pest invasions at high and low latitudes,” it said.

The scientists urged governments to think more about where to plant crops and monitor trade more closely to limit losses.