More fro 2004. You can find "evidence" like this all day long if you just do a simple Google search. Yes, this happens all the time.
9 March
WARMER WINTERS HURTING MOOSE - ISLE ROYALE, US
www.duluthsuperior.com...
Wolf numbers are up and moose are declining on Isle Royale, according to the 46th annual survey in the world’s longest study of predator-prey
relationships. The moose population has slid to 750 on the Lake Superior island, down from 900 last year and 1,100 in 2002. Moose are faring better
than when their numbers bottomed out at 500 after the deep-snow winter of 1995-96, when hundreds perished. But their numbers are in question because
of ticks, heat stress and declining habitat
16 March
LOCUSTS SWARM - AUSTRALIA
news.bbc.co.uk...
A plague of locusts that has devastated crops in the Australian outback has begun migrating south.
Heavy rains that ended a long drought in north-eastern Australia has provided ideal breeding conditions for the bugs. Officials said the swarms that
appeared in remote parts of Queensland had moved to more built-up New South Wales.
”We were just staggering out of the drought, we are incredibly frustrated,” said farmer Bev Dennis, based 550 km (340 miles) west of Sydney. ”A
thick haze of them came through over the weekend and chomped their way through our oats crop overnight,” she added. Until the weekend, locust
fighters thought they had won the battle over Australia’s worst locust outbreak since December 2000. More than 200,000 hectares (494,000 acres) have
been sprayed in a bid to contain the plague. But the heavy rainfalls that ended the drought last month rendered the insecticides virtually useless
16 March
RARE FISH SPECIES ONCE BELIEVED TO BE EXTINCT - TANZANIA
www.terradaily.com...
Tanzanian fishermen have caught coelacanth, a rare species of fish that was once believed to be extinct, a senior conservation official said on
Tuesday. “Coelacanth is a rare species of fish, which the world of science regarded as extinct and existed only in fossil records, saying that it
lived some 50 million years ago,” Tanzanian Marine Parks and Reserves Manager Chikambi Rumisha told AFP
18 March
SPECIES IN DECLINE – BRITAIN
news.independent.co.uk...
news.bbc.co.uk...
Two new studies of UK wildlife provide alarming evidence that many animal and plant species in Britain are in sharp decline due to human activity. The
authors of one report claim their findings support the hypothesis the world could be in the midst of a sixth mass extinction.
Falls in numbers of butterfly, bird and plant species could be due to habitat destruction and climate change. Details of the studies are outlined in
the latest issue of Science magazine. In one study, researchers analysed data from six surveys of UK butterfly, bird and plant species produced over
the last 40 years.
The argument amongst some naysayers is that... insects are nowhere near as vulnerable to extinction as plants, birds and mammals. The results show
this isn’t true They found the majority of butterfly species, a total of 71%, had declined over 20 years. The researchers found 54% of British bird
species fell over 20 years and 28% of native plant species decreased over 40 years.
24 March
DOLPHIN DEATHS FLORIDA US
ap.tbo.com...
The death toll among dolphins in Panhandle bays and beaches has climbed to 90, but the cause of the deaths remains a mystery, officials said
Wednesday. Tissue analyses indicate the dolphins had been exposed to red tide, a toxic algae known to kill sea life. But more tests are pending, said
Blair Mase, a coordinator for the National Marine Fisheries Service.
24 March
UNUSUAL SCORES OF SEABIRDS STARVING - ALASKA
story.news.yahoo.com.../dead_seabirds
Thousands of dead or starving seabirds have fallen out of the sky or washed up on beaches along the south-central coast of Alaska, and scientists say
they don’t know why.
Up to 2,000 dead or ill common murres, which resemble penguins, have been spotted this month, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Tom Van
Pelt, a Fish and Wildlife Service biologist, said the recent deaths could be linked to severe weather, such as high wind and ice, or a scarcity of
fish.
6 April
BIRD BEAK DEFORMITIES - ALASKA
story.news.yahoo.com...
A bird beak deformity first recorded among black-capped chickadees near Anchorage has been increasingly seen in crows in Southeast Alaska, broadening
an already mysterious phenomenon. Black-capped chickadees, Northwestern crows and 27 other species of birds in Alaska have been reported with beaks up
to three times their normal length. The deformity often strikes mature birds and reduces their ability to feed and preen effectively. In many birds,
the deformity leads to death.
”We don’t know what’s causing the problem,” said Colleen Handel, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Alaska Science
Center in Anchorage. She’s been studying the beak deformities for five years.
16 April
MIGRATING BIRDS RELY ON SUNSETS, SATRS AND MAGNETIC FIELD
news.bbc.co.uk...
US scientists believe they have made an important breakthrough in the mystery of how migrating birds manage to navigate thousands of kilometres and
arrive at exactly the same spot each year. Laboratory experiments in the past have suggested the birds may use a number of cues, including sunlight,
stars and the Earth’s magnetic field, which they can detect inside their bodies. But this new study, reported in the journal Science, involved
tracking a group of thrushes across hundreds of miles in the American Midwest and finding out what happened when they were deliberately confused by a
man-made magnet and knocked off course. Amazingly then, this study does seem to confirm that birds can “reset” their navigation systems daily by
comparing the direction of the sunset with the magnetic signals they detect.
The research was conducted by William Cochran, at the Illinois Natural History Survey in Champaign, and colleagues.
12 May
THE MANTIS SHRIMPS - DORSET UK
www.telegraph.co.uk...
Bathers have been warned to be on the lookout for ”kick-boxing” shrimps after a pair of the rare species was discovered off Dorset. The mantis
shrimps, usually found in tropical waters, are reputed to be able to deliver punches with the force of a small calibre bullet.
Two of the three-inch long shrimps have been found in trawler nets in Weymouth Bay. Marine biologists believe that there may be a colony of them due
to global warming.The shrimps have been put on public display in reinforced tanks at the SeaLife Centre at Weymouth. A spokesman said that if bathers
saw the orange shrimps, they should approach them with caution. The bigger mantis shrimps are usually found in tropical areas around the equator. But
the species found off the Dorset coast are probably from the Mediterranean. Chris Brown, the display supervisor at the centre, said: ”As far as we
know this species has never been found off Britain.
23 May
SHEEP STILL CONTAMINATED BY CHERNOBYL - SCOTLAND
www.sundayherald.com...
Eighteen years after nuclear disaster, ban on Scots farmers selling mutton affected by radiation remains in force
8 June
AFRICAN LOCUSTS
www.guardian.co.uk...
Spain has sent seven aircraft to help a multinational effort to contain swarms of locusts that are threatening to devastate crops in Africa and spread
north through Morocco and, potentially, to Europe.
”It is a lot easier to control the plague in the desert than in Spain,” Juan Peña, the head of the Spanish project, told El País newspaper
yesterday. The potential is for a plague of proportions not seen for nearly 20 years.
But some experts have warned that if the winds blow north instead, some locusts could reach southern Europe.
The last desert locust plague in the late 80s took several years’ work and more than $300m to control, according to FAO
9 June
27,000 AMERICAN WHITE PELICANS MISSING - N DAKOTA US
seattlepi.nwsource.com...
Wildlife officials estimate nearly 27,000 American white pelicans have abandoned their summer nesting grounds at the Chase Lake National Wildlife
Refuge north of here. The question is why – and where they went.
”It’s like they packed up and left in the middle of the night – except they didn’t pack up, they just left,” said Ken Torkelson, a spokesman
for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Bismarck. Left behind were thousands of eggs, which are unlikely to hatch, officials say. Chase Lake, which
was designated a national wildlife refuge in 1908, is the home of the largest known nesting colony of white pelicans in North America.
FOLLOW UP ON THE DAKOTA PELICANS BY LINDA MOULTON HOWE:
www.earthfiles.com...
27,000 American White Pelicans Have Disappeared from North Dakota Wildlife Refuge
UPDATE ON THE MISSING PELICANS.
www.earthfiles.com...
Some may have ended up in Yellowstone.
FOUR WHITE PELICANS FROM MISSING 29,000 TRACKED BY SATELLITE
www.earthfiles.com...
Four of the 29,000 pelicans had previously been wired with radio transmitters for migration research from satellites. Today I talked with Ken
Torkelson, writer-editor, and spokesperson for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bismarck, North Dakota, about what the satellite reported from
those four American White Pelicans.
17 June
INSECT ENJOYS WARMER UK CLIMATE
news.bbc.co.uk...
An insect that normally inhabits warm countries has been found living and breeding in the UK, entomologists say.
The green ”shield” bug, which attacks a broad range of crops, is usually seen in the Mediterranean, Middle East, Australia, North America and
Africa. Its arrival in Britain is a clear sign of climate change, claim experts from the Natural History Museum, London.
”I’m always reluctant to invoke global warming but it’s the only explanation,” said curator of beetles, Max Barclay.
Stink bugs It is a well known phenomenon that big cities such as London are a couple of degrees warmer than the surrounding countryside. The asphalt
and concrete for roads, buildings, and other structures absorb the Sun’s heat, causing surface temperatures and overall ambient temperatures to
rise.
25 June
STARFISH AND CRAB DEATHS - WHITE SEA RUSSIA
news.bbc.co.uk...
Environmentalists in northern Russia have expressed concern at the latest incident of mass deaths among marine fauna on the shores of the White Sea.
Russia TV reported that thousands of dead starfish and crabs have washed ashore near the village of Syuzma in the Archangel region, along a nine-mile
stretch of coast.
In 1990, millions of starfish, as well as a large number of mussels, crabs, dozens of nerpa seals, seals and belugas were killed.
BROWN PELICANS DIVING INTO ASPHALT - ARIZONA US
www.cbc.ca...
PHOENIX, ARIZ. - Endangered brown pelicans, flying nnland in a search for food, have been diving into roads and sidewalks in Arizona, mistaking
pavement shimmering with heat for fish-filled waterways. More than 30 of the birds have been injured over the past two weeks between Yuma and Phoenix,
the Arizona Game and Fish Department’s wildlife centre said on Thursday.
”They try to land on the water, but it’s asphalt and it’s ’Bam! That doesn’t feel so good,’” Sandy Cate, the centre’s director, told
the Associated Press. Wildlife officials are treating the birds for dehydration and emaciation as well as their injuries from the road plunges. Dry
weather has led many waterways to dry up along the U.S. West Coast, causing food shortages for wildlife.
12 July
CLIMATE WARNING FROM THE DEEP - NORTH SEA
news.bbc.co.uk...
Strange things are happening in the North Sea. Cod stocks are slumping faster than over-fishing can account for, and Mediterranean species like red
mullet are migrating north.
Several sea birds are also in trouble. Kittiwake numbers are falling fast and guillemots are struggling to breed.
And, earlier this summer, hundreds of fulmar (a relative of the albatross) corpses washed up on the Norfolk coast, having apparently starved to death.
Scientists suspect these events are linked and they are trying to work out how.
Nothing is certain yet, but some believe a dramatic change in North Sea plankton is responsible. And, what is more, they blame global warming. Broadly
speaking, as global temperatures rise, cold water species are moving out and warm water species are moving in
13 July
DUCK POPULATION DROPS BY 11 PERCENT - US AND CANADA
www.planetark.org...
The duck population in the United States and Canada dropped 11 percent from a year ago as drought dried up breeding grounds, said the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service and Canadian Wildlife Service yesterday
15 July
HERON COLONY (BIRDS) VANISHED - WASHINGTON US
By Michael Goodspeed (Surfing the Apocalypse)
A heron colony in Point Roberts, Washington has ”VANISHED INTO THIN AIR.” This comes only weeks, of course, after the inexplicable disappearance
of 28,000 pelicans from a wildlife refuge. The pelicans, of course, abandoned their eggs and nests, leaving experts totally flummoxed.
Why are these birds disappearing? Is it possible that electromagnetic influences are effecting the ”sensors” of these birds? Is it possible that
this is in any way connected to the ”freak weather” experienced in many parts of the world and the US, including the southeast, which has
experienced MAJOR flooding and storms over the past week? Further, is it possible that electrified material in space, perhaps attached to a larger
body (i.e. asteroid) is at the root of all of this? These questions are worth asking, and will not go away. And while biologists try to figure out
where the birds went, the bigger, more serious question is: Why did they leave? Biologists hold out hope the colony is just taking a year off for some
reason and will re-establish itself. In the meantime they say it is critical to protect other, healthy heron colonies.
15 July
SEABIRDS MYSTERIOUSLY DYING NEAR FALSE PASS - ANCHORAGE ALASKA
Seabirds have been dying by the dozens in the Aleutian Island village of False Pass. As many as 200 dead birds of several species have been seen
floating in the strait near the village or washed up on the beach. The birds started showing up on the Fourth of July weekend and so far no
explanation for the deaths has been found.
20 July
PELICAN DEATH - CALIFORNIA US
espn.go.com...
California’s endangered brown pelicans are mysteriously starving to death during a bumper year for anchovies, their preferred prey, wildlife
officials said. Hundreds of the ungainly sea birds appear to have flown off course in search of food during their annual migration from the Baja
California peninsula to British Columbia, with young pelicans turning up in Arizona deserts, biologists said. Naturalist Sandy Cate of the Arizona
Game and Fish Department said the phenomenon appears linked to an explosion in pelican numbers combined with changes in Pacific Ocean temperatures.
22 July
PIGEONS LOST DURING RACE - SWEDEN
www.newsday.com...
Organizers of a race for homing pigeons were still scratching their heads in wonder Thursday after about 1,500 of the birds, famous for their ability
to find their way home, went missing during the contest. Of the 2,000 pigeons let loose last week, only about 500 have returned to their lofts after
the 150-kilometer (93 mile) flight between the cities of Ljungby and Malmoe in southern Sweden, said Lars-Aake Nilsson of the Malmoe Homing Pigeon
Club. ”The weather was perfect – no rain, no thunder and no strong winds,” he said. In past races, the birds, all of which sport electronic
identification tags around their feet, made the journey in about two hours. But at Sunday’s race, something went wrong.
23 July
SCRIPPS RESEARCHERS DOCUMENT SIGNIFICANT CHANGES IN THE DEEP SEA
www.spacedaily.com...
Although it covers more than two-thirds of Earth’s surface, much of the deep sea remains unknown and unexplored, and many questions remain about how
its environment changes over time. A new study led by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego,
has shed new light on significant changes in the deep sea over a 14-year period.
Scripps Institution’s Henry Ruhl and Ken Smith show in the new issue of the journal Science that changes in climate at the surface of the ocean may
be impacting communities of larger animals more than 13,400 feet below the ocean surface.
27 July
MALARIA EXPERTS ABUZZ ON GLOBAL WARMING FEARS
story.news.yahoo.com...
Malaria-carrying mosquitoes were once a scourge of Shakespeare’s chilly England and even Arctic regions of the Soviet Union.
With malaria’s history of surviving in the cold, experts are at odds about how far nnland global warming may spread one of the planet’s most
deadly diseases which kills a million people a year in poor countries.
U.N. reports say rising temperatures linked to human burning of fossil fuels are likely to widen malaria’s range in the tropics because mosquitoes
and the parasite they pass on when sucking human blood thrive best in hot, wet climates.
But some insect experts swat those reports as simplistic.
”Temperature is only one of many, many factors in malaria, and in many cases it’s totally irrelevant,” said Paul Reiter, professor of medical
entomology at the Pasteur Institute in Paris.
”Many climate scientists don’t know anything about the complexities of malaria,” he said, adding that the same applied to mosquito-borne
diseases like dengue fever or West Nile virus (news – web sites).
WARMER WORLD Woodward was a co-author of a 2003 U.N. book that says climate change already kills 150,000 people a year and that the number could
double by 2030. Malnutrition, diarrhea, malaria and floods were the biggest threats in a warming world.
28 July
THOUSANDS OF DEAD FISH SEEN OFF ST THOMAS BAY/DELIMARA –
www.timesofmalta.com...
A half a kilometre stretch of sea was filled with floating dead fish off Il-Hofriet (between Delimara and St Thomas Bay) last Friday, conservation
biologist Adriana Vella and members of the Biological Conservation Research Foundation have reported.
They reported the sighting during scientific marine survey work around the Maltese Islands.
”While the sight of these thousands of dead fish was revolting, their stench was even worse,” Ms Vella said.
A similar incident at St Thomas Bay on Sunday was described in Parliament on Monday by Labour MP George Vella, who said the scene was disgusting and
demanded an explanation from the environment minister.
30 July
GLOBAL WARMING HITS UK BIRDS
news.independent.co.uk...
news.independent.co.uk...
Hundreds of thousands of Scottish seabirds have failed to breed this summer in a wildlife catastrophe which is being linked by scientists directly to
global warming. The massive unprecedented collapse of nesting attempts by several seabird species in Orkney and Shetland is likely to prove the first
major impact of climate change on Britain.
In what could be a sub-plot from the recent disaster movie, The Day After Tomorrow, a rise in sea temperature is believed to have led to the
mysterious disappearance of a key part of the marine food chain – the sandeel, the small fish whose great teeming shoals have hitherto sustained
larger fish, marine mammals and seabirds in their millions.
In Orkney and Shetland, the sandeel stocks have been shrinking for several years, and this summer they have disappeared: the result for seabirds has
been mass starvation. The figures for breeding failure, for Shetland in particular, almost defy belief.
More than 172,000 breeding pairs of guillemots were recorded in the islands in the last national census, Seabird 2000, whose results were published
this year; this summer the birds have produced almost no young, according to Peter Ellis, Shetland area manager for the Royal Society for the
Protection of Birds (RSPB).
Martin Heubeck of Aberdeen University, who has monitored Shetland seabirds for 30 years, said: ”The breeding failure of the guillemots is
unprecedented in Europe.” More than 6,800 pairs of great skuas were recorded in Shetland in the same census; this year they have produced a handful
of chicks – perhaps fewer than 10 – while the arctic skuas (1,120 pairs in the census) have failed to produce any surviving young.
The 24,000 pairs of arctic terns, and the 16,700 pairs of Shetland kittiwakes – small gulls – have ”probably suffered complete failure”, said
Mr Ellis.
In Orkney the picture is very similar, although detailed figures are not yet available. ”It looks very bad,” said the RSPB´s warden on Orkney
mainland, Andy Knight. ”Very few of the birds have raised any chicks at all.”
The counting and monitoring is still going on and the figures are by no means complete: it is likely that puffins, for example, will also have
suffered massive breeding failure but because they nest deep in burrows, this is not immediately obvious.
But the astonishing scale of what has taken place is already clear – and the link to climate change is being openly made by scientists. It is
believed that the microscopic plankton on which tiny sandeel larvae feed are moving northwards as the sea water warms, leaving the baby fish with
nothing to feed on.
This is being seen in the North Sea in particular, where the water temperature has risen by 2C in the past 20 years, and where the whole ecosystem is
thought to be undergoing a ”regime shift”, or a fundamental alteration in the interaction of its component species. ”Think of the North Sea as
an engine, and plankton as the fuel driving it,” said Euan Dunn of the RSPB, one of the world´s leading experts on the interaction of fish and
seabirds. ”The fuel mix has changed so radically in the past 20 years, as a result of climate change, that the whole engine is now spluttering and
starting to malfunction. All of the animals in the food web above the plankton, first the sandeels, then the larger fish like cod, and ultimately the
seabirds, are starting to be affected.”
”It shows that climate change is happening now, [with] devastating consequences here in Britain, and it shows that reducing the pollution causing
changes to the earth´s climate should now be the global number one political priority.”
news.independent.co.uk...
Seabird breeding crisis spreads to England
2 Aug
MASS DEATHS OF FLAMINGOS - TANZANIA
allafrica.com...
About 10,000 flamingoes have died since mid June, and preliminary investigations point to a toxin in blue-green algae eaten by the birds . THE
UNIVERSITY of Dar es Salaam has sent a team of scientists to Arusha to join other experts investigating the mysterious deaths of pink flamingoes in
Lake Manyara National Park.
About 10,000 flamingos have died since mid June, and preliminary investigation point to a toxin in blue-green algae eaten by
season.
4 Aug
LOCAL BEACHES AWASH WITH DEAD FISH - MARYLAND US
www.delawareonline.com...
www.thewbalchannel.com...
A surge of cold water generated from an offshore current killed nearly a million adult Atlantic croaker, leaving maintenance crews at local resorts
with their hands full of carcasses to clean up.
In Ocean City, maintenance crews scoured the beaches Tuesday picking up and disposing of hundreds of dead Atlantic croaker – a silvery greenish and
grayish fish with brassy spots – who succumbed to thermal shock.
Town Manager Dennis Dare said employees picked up about 100 dead croakers on Sunday, about 500 on Monday and ``a whole lot more’’ on Tuesday.
Dead croaker have been reported between Assateague Island and the southern Delaware beaches since Saturday.
The Maryland Department of Environment on Tuesday attributed the cause of the deaths to a sudden temperature drop in the water. No other species of
fish or marine animals are believed to have been affected by exposure to the cold water temperatures, and tests for harmful algae blooms and bacteria
have come up negative, according to spokesman Richard McIntire. McIntire said several hundred thousand to slightly more than a million croaker have
died
6 Aug
LOCUSTS INVADE MAURITANIA AFRICA
news.bbc.co.uk...
A swarm of locusts has invaded the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, after devouring crops in rural areas.
The insects – which can eat their own body weight in 24 hours – descended on the city, also stripping bare what little greenery the desert capital
has.
”Within minutes, the sky was brown. Whole trees were bending over with their weight,” a resident told the BBC.
Nations across north-west Africa have appealed for aid to fight what could be the worst locust plague in 15 years.
’Biblical proportions’
The swarms turned green trees to brown skeletons in a matter of hours and even ate the grass from the pitch of the main football stadium.
Residents lit fires and rattled tin boxes filled with stones to try to chase away the insects, reports Reuters news agency
8 Aug
INSECTS POSE GRAVE THREAT - CHINA
story.news.yahoo.com...
Locusts, caterpillers and grubs are munching away grasslands in China’s impoverished western province of Gansu, posing the gravest threat to the
area from bugs in 20 years, Xinhua news agency said Sunday.
Nearly 75,000 hectares (185,000 acres) of grasslands in five counties and cities were being attacked by the insects, an official with the local
livestock and grassland protection department said.
”The plague is the most harmful over the past 20 years,” the official, Wang Wei, was quoted as saying.
”The population density in some place even reaches to 220 insects per square meter,” he said.
Experts predicted 20,000 domestic animals would face difficulty surviving the winter because of the insect attack, Wang said.
Insects had eaten almost all of the grass in three towns in Maqu County, dubbed ”the best natural meadow in Asia,” Xinhua said. In 2000, bugs only
devoured about 47,000 hectares (116,000 acres), it said.
8 August
BEACHED DOLPHINS - CALIFORNIA US
www.cbc.ca...
Authorities in Florida have had to put 30 dolphins to death after they beached themselves on an island north of Palm Beach.
”It was a very painful, very emotional and very difficult decision to make,” said Steve McCulloch, head of marine mammal research at Harbor Branch
Oceanographic Institution.
Thirty-six dolphins were stranded on the beach in southeastern Florida on Friday. Veterinarians and volunteers worked round-the-clock, covering the
animals with wet towels. Rescuers managed to push 34 of the rough-tooth dolphins back out to sea. They swam about seven kilometres and then came
ashore again.
11 Aug
MILLIONS OF LOCUSTS HEADED FOR - DARFUR AFRICA
Wed Aug 11,10:34 AM ET Add Science – Reuters to My Yahoo!
story.news.yahoo.com...
Millions of locusts may be heading for Sudan’s Darfur region, pest control experts said on Wednesday, where violence has already created a
humanitarian disaster and two million people are short of food and medicine
18 Aug
PIGEON WINGS ITS WAY TO NIAGARA FALLS - BRITAIN
A homing pigeon which flew off course during a race between France and Britain was found 3,000 miles away near Niagara Falls, its owner said today.
The wayward bird disappeared in May while flying 200 miles from France to owner Frank Brammer’s house in Gloucester.
Mr Brammer, 81, said he thought the pigeon had got lost or been killed and that he would never see it again after it failed to return home. But a few
weeks later he received a phone call from a woman in Canada who said she had spotted the plastic ring on the pigeon’s leg. He said the bird must
have hitched a ride with a ship as pigeons can only fly about 500 miles a day and need rest. The woman had found Mr Brammer’s phone number on the
plastic ring on the pigeon’s leg when she noticed it was from Britain. The new Canadian owner said he intends to breed from the bird because he is
so tame
18 Aug
LOCUST PLAGUE - AUSTRALIA
story.news.yahoo.com...
Australia’s wheat farmers, fresh from battling the country’s worst drought in a century, are now threatened by a plague of locusts which have
already begun to hatch from a sprawling ”nursery” in the country’s outback.
Early locust hatchings are the precursor of an expected full-scale outbreak in a few weeks’ time, which should rival the one in 2000 that spawned up
to 100 billion insects, officials said.
The new onslaught is taking place in the heart of Australia’s wheat belt and on the fringe of populated areas, making it more threatening this time
for farmers in the sparsely populated outback.
”It’s quite a huge area,” Heath McRae, an official with the Australian Plague Locust Commission, told Reuters on Wednesday. ”It’s been 20
years in some of those areas since people have seen locusts. There are reports of some early hatchings.”
First hatchings are in northern New South Wales (NSW), in the Lightening Ridge opal mining district near Walgett, a major wheat center. ”A serious
locust situation is expected to develop in New South Wales in the spring,” the locust commission warned in its latest bulletin.