Rain isn't always a good thing! Desert Locust Devastation

Locusts. For those born in the 1990s, one of the first images that come to memory is the evil Hopper, a scarred grasshopper, ruthless and violent, and arch-nemesis of the curious and inventing ant Flik in Bug’s life. In the Disney Pixar cartoon, Hopper and his gang devastate crops, destroying any food source available and terrorizing other creatures living in their same area. A plague that for countries like Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Eritrea has become a living nightmare. 2020, the year of the pandemic, but also the year of one of the worst devastations caused by desert locust. Locust swarm clouds can quickly descend and cover a surface area three times the size of New York City. Feasting on anything green, within a few hours, any vegetation that crosses its path is gone. As reported by FAO (Food and Agriculture Organizations of the United Nations), this Biblical plague has created a food crisis for more than 20 million people, at risk of serious starvation. 

In this episode, Dr. Keith Cressman, FAO locust forecasting expert discusses with us how this migratory pest has become a more frequent threat, the role that water plays in increasing or decreasing its likelihood, and how climate change is linked directly to this crisis.

Want to learn more about Desert Locusts and the state of the their spread in the world? Check out Locust Watch where you can find updates and predictions on desert locusts movements across the world and is managed by Dr. Keith Cressman!

For more information on Desert Locust and their biology, movement and how we can control them click here!

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Transcript

David Evans: 0:28

Well, the snow is melted, we're starting to come out of our winter slumber. And a lot of people are using this covid 19 pandemic to switch to growing their own foods. Now being spring, everyone's starting to plan their gardens. And I wonder how many people are thinking about what kind of pests they might have to be dealing with? Come summer. Now we're fortunate up in my neck of the woods up here in Edmonton that we don't have that many pests. Don't get me wrong, we do have pests. But we don't have anything like some other countries and continents around the world. Imagine you are a subsistence farmer in the Horn of Africa. Your family relies on the crops that you produce and the livestock that you graze on your land. Or maybe it's the entire community shares a large piece of land. And you're really getting excited because it's about to become the rainy season, you're expecting the first rains any minute now. You see your first cloud on the horizon, a dark cloud is coming towards you. And you get so excited because the rains are finally coming. You feel a little bit differently, though, when you see that the cloud changes direction and makes a beeline straight for your field. Today on the podcast, we're talking about the worst migratory pests the world knows. They cause mass devastation, they can travel immense distances and affect millions of people. Today's episode, we're talking about desert locusts. why there's such a problem? And how climate change is just making things worse. water we doing? And how can we do better? your one stop shop for everything water related from discussing water to use and the organisms that depend on it for all the global issues that you really never knew all had to do with water. I'm your host, David Evans from the aquatic biosphere project. And I just want to ask you something. What are we doing? How can we do better? So a lot of you may be thinking right now. Well, locusts? Aren't they just grasshoppers? Aren't they just the same things that I have hopping around in my front lawn? Do they really cause that much of an issue? They are really closely related species groups. And so they do look really similar, but they are different. And they have one really big feature that really points out just how different they are. So locusts have a weird superpower, let's say they can reproduce really, really quickly. When they find themselves surrounded by so many other locusts. It's like a switch goes off in their head. And they completely change how they act. It's called being in a gregarious state. Not only do they change how they act, but they also change color, they become more colorful, they're usually pretty slow before they're in a gregarious state, but they begin to move a lot faster. And they begin to be attracted to each other. And it's not just locusts that are already out there that we're concerned about. Lucas can reproduce really, really quickly? how quickly you might ask?

Dr. Keith Cressman, UN FAO: 4:46

A Lucas lives about three months. And it can reproduce in that time, about 20 fold. So that means at the end of three months, you've got 20 times the number of locusts but it's exponential. It means it just jumps up in time. So after six months, you've got 400 times the number of locusts. You know, after a year you've got 160,000 times the number of locusts that you started with. So so you know that obviously starts to explain, you know how they formed swarms.

David Evans: 5:14

This is Dr. Keith cressman, the senior locus forecasting officer For the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization. So that's a lot of big words. Keith, can you explain to us what you really do and why your job is so important?

Dr. Keith Cressman, UN FAO: 5:32

My job basically in FAO is to operate the organization's global desert locusts monitoring an early warning system. So basically keeping tabs on where the locusts are throughout the world, and then forecasting what they're going to do. So kind of like a weather forecast. But in this case, it has to do with desert locusts.

David Evans: 5:53

Now, the reason Keith job is so important, is because these locusts, they're not only a problem to a few people, they're a problem to many, many countries. So their main method of getting around is just flying up really high in the air, and then going wherever the wind takes them. So this takes them up to 150 miles every day. And then when they see some nice juicy crops or, or some lush vegetation down on the ground, then they just fly down and devour it. Oh, yeah. Did I mentioned that desert locusts eat their entire body weight every day? Oh, man, my grocery bill. I hate to say how much that would be. Now, that doesn't really seem to be that big of a deal. until you realize the scale and number of actual insects we're talking about. Do you think Keith, you might be able to give us a bit of a reference to help us understand how big of an issue this might be.

Dr. Keith Cressman, UN FAO: 7:03

For instance, about a year ago, in northern Kenya, there was a swarm that was about 35 miles long by about 15 miles wide, 35 miles long by 15 miles. That's the size of the country of Luxembourg, which is a really small country in Europe, but still,

David Evans: 7:23

that is crazy.

Dr. Keith Cressman, UN FAO: 7:25

And that was one single swarm. So that was like covered the whole areas, like covered with lupus. And so oh, my God, okay, apart from you know, you know, how big they can get and how much quickly they can multiply, or how far they can migrate. You know, the big problem is how much they can eat. Right? Right. This is the thing because locusts eat everything. You know, they don't prefer certain crops, they will just eat anything that's around. And of course, they like the natural vegetation, that desert, but when they finish that, then they get into the farms, you know, into the farmers that are growing cereal crops and their fruits and vegetables and you know, even coffee plantations, that stuff like that, if you just imagine a swarm the size of Manhattan, right New York City, and that's not a big swarm for locusts. In one day, that swarm will eat the same amount of food as everybody in California and New York. Everyone in California and New York, and one day will eat the same amount of food that that swarm would consume. Oh, my

David Evans: 8:26

goodness. That's, that's crazy. So this swarm the size of luxenberg?

Dr. Keith Cressman, UN FAO: 8:33

Yeah, it would eat the same amount of food is everybody in Kenya? Oh, my

David Evans: 8:38

goodness, and one day in one day? Well, that is absolutely terrifying.

Dr. Keith Cressman, UN FAO: 8:45

So this is why, you know, this comes back to the importance of good monitoring of early warning of decent forecasts and try to you know, not let get these things out of control.

David Evans: 9:01

Alright, so I have to be honest, when I was first finding out about this issue, I couldn't understand why I hadn't heard more about it. It just seems to be such a humanitarian issue and environmental issue, every social factor that I thought I should have heard a lot about it. This locusts invasion is putting millions of people at risk of starvation. And we're not even talking about the effects of COVID-19. It's a crisis within a crisis. It's the worst locust invasion in a generation. locusts needs certain environmental factors, to be able to provide them the perfect habitat so they can grow to huge numbers. And this is why we don't have plagues every year. At this point in the podcast, you're probably wondering, but David, this is a podcast about water. Why are we talking about desert locusts? Well, it turns out that desert locusts, the one thing they really need to be able to kick start that life cycle and grow to the gregarious plagues that swarm across Africa and Asia. What they need is water.

Dr. Keith Cressman, UN FAO: 10:23

rainfall is a trigger unusually heavy rain, it could be very short in duration, but very heavy, that then allows the sandy soil in the desert to be wet for the egg laying, and then allows for the natural vegetation to pop out of the ground and, and become green to provide the shelter and the food for the locusts. So that's the driver, you know, normally doesn't rain much in the desert. So that's why we don't have many problems with desert locusts. But when it does rain, it's not a guarantee we're gonna have a problem with the desert, but it just increases the likelihood that we're going to have a problem. So if we look back at the the current episodes that we have now, which basically started two years ago in mid 2018, from two cyclones and they brought really heavy rains to place what we call the empty quarter in Saudi Arabia as exactly what it is. It's one of the most emptiest places on this planet. There's nothing there except for skyscraper sand dunes. There's no towns, there's no villages for like, you know, 500 miles, you know, there's nothing, no Facebook, no internet connectivity, no podcasts, you know, so,

David Evans: 11:30

yeah, why would why would we want to go there?

Dr. Keith Cressman, UN FAO: 11:33

We wouldn't. But obviously, the locusts went there because of those cyclones. And it was really weird, because, you know, normally there's like one Cyclone a year at the most 2018, we had about four cyclones, and two of those cyclones dropped rain in the exact same place, one in May, and then what about six months later, so just when the vegetation would have been drying out in that place in the desert, here comes you know, cyclone number two. And of course, because it was the empty quarter, you know, nobody could get there to check to see if there's lupus and if there were they couldn't do any type of treatments. So it was kind of like a Club Med holiday for the locusts for nine full months. So remember my numbers at the beginning of the show here. So nine months out, that means roughly about 8000 times the number of locusts.

David Evans: 12:19

It's these strange cyclones and their weird behavior that caused this recent upsurge of locusts. Now, as the climate changes, some areas will get more rain, some areas will get less rain, we're likely to get stronger storm events. And if these storms end up going into the open desert quarter, well, we're likely to get more locust swarms. So it's pretty likely that we haven't seen the last of these locusts. In fact, we're still dealing with the current upsurge. And they're not going away anytime soon. locusts have been around for a very long time. There's records from Egypt, they're mentioned in the Bible, plagues of locusts of biblical proportions. They even love really hot temperatures, so they're probably going to do just fine. Dealing with the climate changing, and the global population increasing, we have locusts that are jeopardizing our food sources. We're starting to have a lot of cards stacking up against us.

Dr. Keith Cressman, UN FAO: 13:28

The other thing with climate change, which we don't know very much about yet is what's going to happen to the wind patterns on the planet. Nope, as they migrate with the wind, you know, they're not like a bird that can fly in any direction. So it's basically they're victims of the wind. So if those wind patterns happen to change, and imagine, you know, temperatures are warming, and we get these kind of, you know, more frequent rainfall events that could open up new habitat for the locusts. Desert locusts could be more often seen in southern Europe, for example, or other parts of Asia, probably not North America, because they'd have to cross the Atlantic. And that's really tough for them to do.

David Evans: 14:06

Alright, so have I painted enough of a doomsday scenario for you yet? So Dr. Chrisman is doing a lot of work, actually, on the control side of things, and part of his job with predicting where these locusts will be prospering is conveying that information to groups on the ground in all of the different countries that are affected, so that they can respond to invasions of locusts when they're still small. So we have a chance of actually combating them and stopping them before they get out of control. Lucas, swarms are kind of like a forest fire. You want to attack it when it's really small, because you have the best chance of putting out the fire right at the source before it gets too big, and you really can't deal with it. Part of the reason that we haven't had large plagues of locusts in the last 70 years is because of work, like the work that Dr. cressman is doing to actually be a quick reaction for us to go and put out the locusts fires whenever they pop up. This has really been a game changer in how we can prevent large scale plagues of locusts, as we've had throughout history. Dr. Chrisman Do you mind just explaining a bit about What we actually do on the ground to prevent locusts from becoming a swarm? Right, I

Dr. Keith Cressman, UN FAO: 15:25

mean, obviously, there's two factors here. One is, first you got to find the locus, and then second, you know, you should be able to treat them in the desert areas of Northern Africa met, many of these places are becoming unsafe even even to get into. So it's the countries themselves are responsible for, for monitoring their own locus and for doing the control operation. So it's not that we have some un, you know, glorified kind of, you know, rescue team that's gonna come in there parachute in there, do that for them, you know, use satellites to detect the green vegetation in the end the rainfall in the desert, we use, you know, tablets connected to satellites for real time data transmission, you know, all this kind of high tech stuff, which sounds really cool. And it is really cool, for sure. But it's worked. I mean, the, you know, the The point is that, you know, with these new technologies that we harness, you know, it has reduced, you know, the these play, you know, even in their own countries that they can't reach all of the areas because of an increasing amount of insecurity. And you can think of northern Mali, you can think of Libya, you can think a dark or you can think of Tigray now in in Ethiopia, and Yemen, you know, Iran, Iraq, you know, places that you've kind of heard about in the news that aren't very safe. And many of these are Lucas habitat once teams on the ground. And the best way, of course, is in the Land Rover, you just go out driving in the desert, looking for green areas and seeing if there's any loop. That sounds pretty fun, really fun. Yeah,

Unknown: 16:54

I've

Dr. Keith Cressman, UN FAO: 16:54

done that a lot. But once you said that I'm kind of concentrating in groups, then that's the time obviously to spray them. We have chemical pesticides that are used. And we have biological pesticides, a fungus that only attacks, locusts and grasshoppers, when you know the teams find these locust concentrations in the desert, they can treat it just with the backpack sprayer. Or maybe if it's a little bit bigger with a sprayer, you know, on the back of their pickup truck, you know, that works really well. But if they miss that, or you know, the areas are just like too big and they don't have enough teams, then you have to go to something bigger and that means aircraft.

David Evans: 17:30

So the good news is that we have people like Dr. Keith cressman, who are out there working to understand where the environmental conditions are just right for another swarm to form and how we can address them head on. The problem is we are still dealing with climate change. And this adds an entire new layer on top of trying to predict where the locusts will be next, and how we can control them from growing out of control. But hopefully, as our technology evolves, we can stay one step ahead, and at least control the size of future swarms so they don't get out of control. If you want to help Dr. Keith cressman, his team, the other national governments that they work with to try to coordinate locus control, the best way to do this is to right to your member of parliament, right to your senator, write to your congressman, if you make this a political issue, that's how we can best support national governments and the FAO who are operating in insecure regions around the world with limited resources in the battle against locusts. A large portion of their resources and their ability to actually operate in these areas is because of support from other nations. One of the most important things to help stabilize a country is to be able to ensure that everyone is fed. If we secure those basic necessities of life, then you can start to address other needs as well. So by raising this issue with your local representation, you can really make a difference. Thanks for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed this episode, please hit the subscribe button so you don't miss any of our future episodes coming out sometime soon. Later. This week, we'll be releasing our full deep dive episode with Dr. Keith Crossman. We'll find out so much more about desert locusts, what's being done to prevent their spread and the science behind it all? You won't want to miss it. I would just like to thank Dr. Keith cressman for taking the time to speak with me about this really complex issue and making it really palatable and understandable. If you want to learn more about desert locusts and what's actually happening in real time, and what Dr. Keith Crossman's predictions are going to be, then you need to check out his website fao.org slash ag slash locusts. It's called locust watch. And he publishes his predictions. There's interactive maps that actually show where the swarms are in real time how big they are and where they're going. It's super cool and fascinating. I highly recommend It very, very cool, but also just a little bit terrifying. I'm the host and producer, David Evans. And I would just like to thank the rest of the team from the aquatic biosphere project, specifically to Paula Polman, S phie Cervera, and Anna Bettini. hanks for all of your help. To earn more about the aquatic iosphere project and what we're oing here in Alberta telling he story of water. Check us out t aquatic biosphere.ca. And if ou have any questions or omments about the show, we'd ove to hear them. Email us at onservation@aquariumSocietyofalb rta.ca. Please don't forget to like, subscribe, and leave s a review. It really helps s out. Thanks so much for coming on this journey with us. In two weeks will be our final episod of season one. Our final episod is going to focus on fish f aud, how 10% of the seafoo that we buy, or we get served in restaurants isn't even the fi h it's supposed to be. We're etting taken for a ride a lot of the time when we go and buy ou food. And it's not necess rily the grocery stores fault r the restaurants fault. They'r also being taken for a ride. he seafood supply chain is ext emely complex. It's not as sim le as going to a field seeing cows and then eating that cow la er. There's so many differ nt steps in catching, produc ng, and packaging fish before it gets to your plate. A lot of things can go wrong along that c ain. So if you love seafoo, and you want to make sure t at you're eating a sustai able product, not only from a environmental point of view, ut also from a human point f view, so you don't have slave abor or anything involved with t e production of that fish gettin to your plate. You're gonna ant to listen to this episod, we go to the experts to get al of the insight on how to find s stainable options in seafoo. Tune in you won't want to mis it. Thanks and it's been a spla h