What Ram saw was a swarm of the desert or yellow locusts (Schistocerca gregaria). He identifies the pest. “It is not the first time I had seen them,” he says, “but the swarm size was mind-boggling, not to mention the time of the attack.”
Yellow locusts from Pakistan raid Rajasthan and Gujarat every year. The insect has a lifespan of 90 days. It arrives in July, breeds, and the new generation leaves for Pakistan-Iran by October. The swarms chase greenery and raid regions that have just had monsoon because that is the best time to find food and breed. Usually, India faces less than 10 swarm attacks annually, but in 2019 there were over 200, says a scientist at the Union government’s Locust Watch Centre (IWC) in Jodhpur, requesting anonymity. There is no official declaration on the number of attacks so far. Apart from the spike in the number of attacks, the size of the swarms was more than twice the usual, say eyewitnesses.
Esta historia es de la edición February 01, 2020 de Down To Earth.
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