Planes Sent to Attack African Locusts

Spain has sent seven aircraft to help a multinational effort to contain swarms of locusts that are threatening to devastate crops in Africa and spread north through Morocco and, potentially, to Europe.

"It is a lot easier to control the plague in the desert than in Spain," Juan Peña, the head of the Spanish project, told El País newspaper yesterday.

An intense campaign of spraying to the south of the Atlas mountains is attacking the swarms that are starting to appear after two exceptionally wet years provided perfect breeding conditions.

The potential is for a plague of proportions not seen for nearly 20 years.

"Locusts are breeding in thousands of spots over large areas south of the Atlas mountains stretching from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia to western Libya," the senior officer of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation's locust group, Clive Elliot, warned.

"Hoppers are forming bands and are at the last stage before they become adults."

Experts have warned that if £9.2m of extra financing is not provided soon, a full-scale plague will have developed by the end of the year - devastating crops across north Africa.

The FAO says more than £22m has been spent over the past eight months on locust control, with 2.1m hectares (5.2m acres) treated across north Africa.

Winds were expected to carry swarms this month into Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal.

But some experts have warned that if the winds blow north instead, some locusts could reach southern Europe.

"Despite intensive control operations on the ground and by air, it is very difficult to find and treat all of the locust infestations in the vast and often remote desert areas," Mr Elliot said.

The last desert locust plague in the late 80s took several years' work and more than $300m to control, according to FAO.