Desert locust outbreaks in East Yemen

A large amount of desert locusts were reported in the desert areas of Hadhramout province in the far eastern part of Yemen, said the General Director of the Agriculture Office in Hadramout, Omer Karmah, last Sunday.
 

Karamah told Saba News Agency that the National Monitoring and Controlling Center of Desert Locusts conducted a field survey last April on the breeding areas of locusts in  Hadramout, Mahrah and Shabwa governorates, and found 128 hectares to be infested.
 

Karamah called for the concerned authorities to intervene quickly or to face a dangerous outbreak of desert locusts.
 

In a report issued on May 5, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said the locust situation remained a cause for concern in Yemen and northern Somalia where swarms formed during April and moved to the interior of both countries as well as into Northeast Ethiopia. Breeding will occur in the three countries with hatching and the formation of hopper groups and bands in May. The situation requires intensive monitoring and control in order to reduce the possibility of new swarms forming by mid June that could threaten other countries in the Central Region and perhaps even Southwest Asia. Elsewhere, control operations were carried out against hopper infestations on the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia. Scattered adults were present in the spring breeding areas in Northwest Africa and Southwest Asia where small-scale breeding may occur during May.
 

Several locust swarms infested Abyan and Shabwa provinces in the southern parts of Yemen last April, according to local police reports from the two provinces.
 

In a report published on the website of the Information Center of the Ministry of the Interior, it said that the large swarms of locust coming from Somalia have spread in Radhoum, a costal district of Shabwa province from which they spread to all districts of Shabwa.
 

 Unusual rains have been flooding many parts of Yemen during the past week, increasing the threat of locust outbreaks across the country and possible infestations to neighboring countries.
 

In the report, the FAO said that an outbreak developed in March on the southern coast of Yemen where more than 200 small hopper bands formed within a limited area of about 1,000 square km. Ground teams treated a large area and only two small swarms   seen flying on the coast at the end of the month. Any hopper bands and adults that are not controlled will form small adult groups and start a few small swarms that will probably move towards the summer breeding areas in the interior of southern Yemen where heavy rain begans to fall in late March. A small outbreak also developed on the northwest coast of Somalia within an area of about 2,000 square km where nearly two-dozen small hopper bands and two small swarms were reported. Although the infestations are expected to remain in situ during most of the forecast period because of unusually favorable conditions, there is a moderate risk that a few adult groups or small swarms could move up the escarpment to the Ethiopian plateau or east along Northern Somalia. Control operations should commence in early April. Locusts declined in winter breeding areas along both sides of the Red Sea as vegetation dried out in March. Consequently, only small-scale breeding occurred in a few places on the coast of Saudi Arabia. Scattered adults remained on the coast of Sudan and a few adults were reported to be reproducing on the northern coast of Eritrea.

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