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Desert Locust in Kenya - Control Operations in Turkana County VNR

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is fighting the ongoing infestations of Desert Locusts in East Africa where the locust situation remains a threat to people’s livelihood and food security.

In Turkana County, Kenya, massive efforts have been done with both aerial and ground operations to control and contain a second-generation of locusts, either at hopper or at swarm stage.

The Desert Locust control operation in Turkana is a tandem operation between people on the ground and people in the air combining surveillance, verification and control.

Country Kenya

Duration 4m50s

Edit Version International

Video Type Video News Release (VNR)

Date 08/13/2020

File size 87.60 MB

Unique ID UF2TB0

All editorial uses permitted

Production details and shotlist

UNFAO Source FAO Video

Shotlist LOCATIONS: Turkana County, Kenya

DATE: June 2020

SOUND: Natural / English

LENGHT: 04’50’’

SOURCE: FAO

RESTRICTION: Please give on-screen credit to FAO

1. Aerial shot

2. Aerial shot seeing helicopter shadow on the ground

3. SOUNDBITE (English) Christian Pantenus, FAO Regional Desert Locust Coordinator: “What you see down there, this is ideal for the hopper development. So, I suspect there are a lot around here. I would say we just touch down somewhere.”

4. SOUNDBITE (English) helicopter pilot: “Alright, ok. It is ok there? Alright”

5. Desert Locust hopper bands on the ground

6. Desert Locust hopper bands on tree trunks

7. Wide shot of hoppers covering the trunks of several trees

8. Close up of hoppers roosting on a tree

9. Wide hoppers on the ground, goats walking in the background

10. Wide hoppers on the ground, dromedaries walking in the background

11. SOUNDBITE (English) Stanley Kipkoech, Turkana Base Manager, Ministry of Agriculture Kenya: “What we are experiencing now are hatchlings which we call hoppers. Or rather in the biological terms they are called nymphs. At these nymphs’ stages, our focus is to control.”

12. Hoppers on green leaves

13. Farmer trying to drive the hoppers out of a cultivated field

14. Farmer wiping sweat

15. SOUNDBITE (English) Stanley Kipkoech, Turkana Base Manager, Ministry of Agriculture Kenya: “Now, with the infestation levels of what we have now of the hoppers going up to 200 sites already identified as hoppers, very massive indeed, and therefore we expect a lot of destruction on the browse and vegetation.”

16. A group of Kenya National Youth Service volunteers running towards gathering point

17. Various National Youth Service volunteers wearing masks in formation

18. Close up faces of National Youth Service volunteers in masks

19. National Youth Service volunteers putting on protective suits

20. National Youth Service volunteers in protective suits, masks and gloves spraying locust hopper bands

21. Vitalis Juma, Control operations officer Turkana county coordinating the spraying operation

22. SOUNDBITE (English) Vitalis Juma, Control operations officer Turkana county, Kenya: “We wanted to control them as fast as possible before they reach instar 5 (last hopper stage) and young adults who will start again maybe copulating and laying more eggs. So, we need to control very fast.”

23. National Youth Service volunteers at work spraying locust hopper bands

24. Tilt up from hoppers being sprayed to National Youth Service volunteer at work

25. SOUNDBITE (English) Vitalis Juma, Control operations officer Turkana county, Kenya: “In another week time, they will go to another instar ( stage ). So, the more you delay, the more they mature. And the more disaster that will come. So, you have to deal with them very fast.”

26. Tobias Takavarasha, FAO representative in Kenya, walking with other people towards two airplanes and a helicopter

27. Tobias Takavarasha and a group of people in masks talking nearby airplanes with FAO logos

28. SOUNDBITE (English) Tobias Takavarasha, FAO representative in Kenya: “The challenge is that the Desert Locusts come in huge numbers. And if we would delay the operations of controlling or containing them, either at hopper stage or swarm stage, they can fly to another area and fly back.”

29. Tobias Takavarasha walking in a field

30. Tobias Takavarasha assessing crop damages and speaking with a farmer

31. Close up of Tobias Takavarasha assessing crop damages

32. SOUNDBITE (English) Tobias Takavarasha, FAO representative in Kenya: “We continue to monitor because locusts can go to places where they cannot easily reach and then emerge from there. So we continue to strengthen our surveillance capacity, our control efforts and our livelihoods recovery efforts. It is a process. So, we can’t specify a specific date that by this date they will go, but we can simply say: by this date we have contained to a large extent what could have been a disaster.”

33. Pull focus from a bush to a spray vehicle

34. Spray vehicle spraying pesticide

35. SOUNDBITE (English) Tobias Takavarasha, FAO representative in Kenya: “So our efforts as FAO are to complement the work the government is doing in the county to reclaim land, to recover land, to train farmers, to keep farmers so that ultimately so that ultimately Turkana can become food self-sufficient. That is the hope of everyone.”

36. Aerial shot of a motorcade of vans and jeeps

37. Tilt down from a National Youth Service volunteer sitting on a van trunk to spraying equipment

38. National Youth Service volunteer spraying hoppers

39. Low shot of spraying

40. Helicopter taking off

41. Aerial shot of Turkana county

Script The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is fighting the ongoing infestations of Desert Locusts in East Africa where the locust situation remains a threat to people’s livelihood and food security.

Significant progress has been made in a number of countries, especially in Kenya, where just a few of the 29 counties that were infested in February 2020 have Desert Locusts today.

That is a success, but the threat of possible re-infestation towards the end of the year will call for careful and continued surveillance, warns FAO.

There is still a need to build up monitoring and response capacity across the region, to be ready if a renewed upsurge occurs.

From the beginning of January up until early August 2020 over 600,000 hectares have been controlled across the East Africa region.

So far, over a half a trillion locusts have been killed in the entire region, FAO estimates, and so were prevented from damaging crops and rangelands.

In Kenya, FAO has trained hundreds of National Youth Service (NYS) volunteers as part of its action plan to boost the government’s surveillance and control of the worst desert locust invasion the country has seen in 70 years.

In Turkana County, Kenya, massive efforts have been done with both aerial and ground operations to control and contain a second-generation of locusts, either at hopper or at swarm stage.

The Desert Locust control operation in Turkana is a tandem operation between people on the ground and people in the air combining surveillance, verification and control.

There is a window of opportunity of about four hours to spray in the morning before the locusts start flying and before the air temperature is too high.

First thing in the morning the helicopters are sent to verify if the Desert Locusts are still in the locations that were spotted and GPS tagged by ground surveillance crews the previous day. The spray aircraft loaded with pesticide target verified locations, respecting the no go areas such as homes, villages, water bodies, etc. and again informing communities.

Crews on the ground would engage with any residents near the area to inform them of the control activity and provide them with instructions on how to keep themselves or their animals safe.

Simultaneously, other aircraft that go on patrol flying low for three or four hours in search of new swarms. All the pilots have been trained to recognize the locusts when they are roosting on top of the trees. Once locusts are identified, people on the ground take a GPS location and then communicate that with the helicopter pilot who does a ground verification of the locusts and their stage of development. All this data is captured using FAO’s eLocust3 app so that it is fed back to FAO headquarters and informs the ability to monitor, predict and respond to global locust movements. That data stream coming from all the affected countries is critical for coordination and response.

From June to December many more people in the region could be severely food insecure due to Desert Locusts alone. But now with COVID-19 as an additional factor and the pre-existing caseload of people already food insecure prior to the upsurge, the situation in the region is quite dramatic.

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