Spring-bred swarms will spread to summer breeding areas

The unprecedented Desert Locust threat to food security and livelihoods continues in the Horn of Africa and is likely to spread to southwest Asia and perhaps West Africa.

EAST AFRICA & YEMEN
In East Africa, second-generation breeding is underway in northwest Kenya and numerous hopper bands have formed that will give rise to immature swarms from the second week of June until at least mid-July. A similar situation is underway in Somalia and Ethiopia. Control operations continue in all affected areas. Most of the new swarms will migrate northwards from Kenya to Ethiopia and traverse South Sudan to Sudan after mid-June while other swarms will move to northern Ethiopia. Swarms that reach northeast Somalia are likely to migrate across the northern Indian Ocean to the Indo-Pakistan border area. In Yemen, breeding is in progress along the southern coast and in the interior where swarms are likely to form, some of which could migrate to northern Somalia and northeast Ethiopia.

SOUTH-WEST ASIA
Control operations continue in spring breeding areas of Iran and Pakistan. Early migration of spring-bred swarms from southwest Pakistan to Rajasthan, India occurred in May before the monsoon and some swarms continued to northern states for the first time since 1962. The swarms will oscillate east and westwards before returning to lay eggs with the onset of the monsoon in Rajasthan where successive waves of swarms will arrive from southern Iran in June and the Horn of Africa in July. Control operations are underway.

WEST AFRICA
In Sudan, the seasonal rains commenced recently in the extreme south of the summer breeding area just north of South Sudan. If rains continue in the coming weeks, then conditions are likely to be favourable for any swarms that arrive from Ethiopia and Kenya and they would be more likely to settle, mature and lay eggs. If, on the other hand, rains are limited and conditions remain dry during June in Sudan, then swarms would continue to eastern Chad in the last week of June and migrate further west in the Sahel of West Africa ahead of the summer rains, reaching eastern Niger during the first week of July, eastern Mali in mid-July, southeast Mauritania in late July.

For more information please download the Desert Locust Bulletin: http://desertlocust-crc.org/Download.ashx?File=App_Uploads/Bulletins/Files/200607071328DL500e.pdf