Mauritania fights locust invasion, Moroccan experts due to help

A group of Moroccan experts is due, in Nouakchott soon, to help Mauritanian authorities fight the invasion of locusts north of the country.

Mauritanian minister of rural development and environment, Ahmed Ould Hmidou, said, during a meeting to discuss means to fight this invasion, that the northern and central regions of his country are being invaded by a storm of locusts, which requires a mobilization of all concerned departments.

An official from the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) in Nouakchott, put at US$ 400,000 the cost of such a mobilization.

According to the latest bulletin of the FAO Emergency Center for Locust Operations, the desert locust situation remained serious as outbreaks continued in Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Sudan where hopper and adult groups as well as a few bands and swarms formed during November.

Although control operations were in progress in all areas, locust groups and a few swarms invaded North West Africa and laid eggs that started to hatch by the end of November, said the FAO bulletin.