At the end of last year due to extremely wet weather in East Africa has a huge number of desert locust. A swarm of insects can overcome in day to 150 km, and Kenya calculated that the peak danger to their territory will be in the middle of July. The exterminators are few days while the young locust grows to apply the pesticides, but their resources were extremely limited.
The main problem in the fight against locusts – not to waste time in vain. Kenyans have no opportunity to fill in all the fields with poison, exterminators operate in small groups, processing the largest concentrations of insects. If they miss some of them and the locust grow up, stand on the wing and forms a Roy, the fight can be considered lost. But how to determine where to direct people with chemicals?
Christopher Ahelo scout, employee of the new service under the government of the district of Turkana, whose task is to search for clusters of locusts. Insects there are so many that they can’t see the trees and bushes on which they sit. To the eye to determine the size and danger of such concentration impossible, so he uses a smartphone app E-Locust. With the help of Christopher photographs each cluster and sends the data to the processing centre in Lodwar, the administrative centre of the Turkana.
It was there, in the center, experts are studying the data from the scout and schedule processing of the detected clusters. In June, they had already processed 30 830 hectares of land, of which 8,500 hectares from the air. If not, locusts will eat everything in its path, collecting every sq km per day food is more than enough for 35 000 people.
Source — Reuters