No DDT, no problem.
China has hatched a pest-control plan to combat the global locust scourge — by dispatching an army of ducks to the Middle East to eat the suckers.
Chinese agricultural experts plan to deploy a squadron of 100,000 hangry birds to Pakistan by early next year, according to Lu Lizhi, the project chief and senior researcher with the Zhejiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
While the idea might sound ri-duck-ulous, the “biological weapons” are reportedly more effective than pesticides with one bird able to “to eat more than 200 locusts a day,” Lu told Time Magazine.
The grasshopper-culling quackers are slated to conduct a dry run of their mission in the similarly arid Xinjiang region before leaving for Pakistan. Stopping the locusts is imperative for China as it shares a border with the South Asian country.
Swarms of desert locusts have reached central parts of Punjab from its southern areas.ZUMAPRESS.comSupport for the feathery eco-warriors is gaining traction on Chinese social media, racking up 520 million views on China’s Weibo social media platform on Thursday, reports the Guardian.A Twitter video of the ducks amassing for battle drew similarly supportive responses from the Western peanut gallery.
“I love this battle, its very organic,” quipped one Twitter wit of the environmentally friendly measure.
“I am very amazed and impressed at the solutions that China can come up with in the face of any challenges,” observed another. “Even with the threat of swarms of locusts invading China, China can mobilize the ‘army’ of ducks to handle the locusts.”
Despite the positive response, some experts doubt the unorthodox measure will ever get off the ground.
“Ducks rely on water, but in Pakistan’s desert areas, the temperature is very high,” says China Agricultural University professor Zhang Long, who was sent to help Pakistan to fight the locusts. Instead, he advocated for relying on traditional insecticides to quash the pestilence.
Scientists better devise something quick —the climate-change-caused bug plague has already reached biblical proportions. Last week, millions of locusts blackened the skies across the Middle East, while swarms of Kenyan grasshoppers caused $70 million worth of damage last month in the country’s worst outbreak in 70 years.
If unchecked, their current numbers could grow 500 times by June, according to the United Nations.
