An "air force" of three "squadrons" of starlings will be bred in
artificial nests in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous
Region to help combat a plague of locusts there, a senior official
said yesterday.
The birds will be stationed on the north side of the Tianshan
Mountains, the Yili River valley and the northwest part of the
Junggar Basin, all of which are prone to attack by the insects, Mu
Chen, director of the Xinjiang headquarters of locust and mouse
control, said.
Starlings make a meal of
some locusts
Li Jun, a locust-control expert with the Xinjiang department of
animal husbandry, said damage to pasture areas will be reduced by
70 percent once the starlings are introduced.?
And that will save the region some 30 million yuan (US$4
million) in the first year alone, he said.
Xinjiang is one of the regions that suffers most from locust
attacks, with more than 3 million hectares of pasture damaged every
year.
In response, biologists suggested the use of starlings, as they
feed on locusts and can nest on simple piles of stones and
rocks.
"Using starlings is the best natural way to control locusts," Li
said.
And the cost of building nests from piles of stones is minimal,
he said.
In comparison, to spray 27,000 hectares of pasture with
pesticide would cost 900,000 yuan, Li said.
Also, the birds are better than pesticides at killing locusts,
and they don't cause any pollution, he said.
Some 4 million starlings inhabit Xinjiang, effectively
safeguarding 133,300 hectares of pasture, or 20 percent of the area
hit by locusts.
It takes about 300 starlings to "protect" one hectare of
grassland, Li said.
Over the years, the local government has invested huge amounts
of financial and human resources to fight locusts. But years of
using pesticide have caused serious pollution to pasture lands,
where millions of herdsmen live, he said.
Chickens have been used in the past to eat the locusts, but they
proved ineffective.
The original idea to use starlings came from a herdsman from the
Kazakh ethnic group more than a decade ago, after they noticed the
birds flocking whenever the locusts appeared.
(China Daily/Xinhua News Agency August 3,
2007)
