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Xinjiang to Raise More Locust-killing Fowl
Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region has decided to battle this year's onslaught of crop-eating locusts with the big guns: chickens and ducks.
So far this year, over 700,000 of the train-to-eat-locust fowl have been credited for killing a substantial proportion of the insects that threatened farmland in one of the region's worst plagues of the pest in years.
Regional officials have decided to raise at least 200,000 ducks next year, double the number bred for this year, and also will arrange for more chickens to be hatched.
One duck can eat up to 400 locusts a day, twice as many as a chicken, according to the officials.
Xinjiang and some other parts of China witnessed the most serious locust disaster this year with 2.6 million hectares of land attacked by the insects.
The central and local governments have spent over 35 million yuan (UA$4.2 million) on pest-control chemicals and equipment, and said the situation is basically under control in most parts of China.
Two pilots on a pesticide-spraying mission over Xinjiang died in an air crash late last month.
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