Red-billed Queleas destroy crops (1 Viewer)

[Andy Adcock]

Kenyan rice farmers battle quelea birds in Kisumu

Kenya wants to kill some six million quelea birds which have invaded rice fields around the country.

www.bbc.com

 

[radix023]

I saw this story today, it seems like they are definitely a threat to poor farmers. I can't believe the widespread use of toxic chemicals is the answer.

Quelea birds wreaking havoc

Bulawayo's most popular daily newspaper

www.chronicle.co.zw

Quelea - Africa's most hated bird

For thousands of years, subsistence farmers in sub-Saharan Africa have been at the mercy of the voracious Red-billed Quelea bird; sky-blackening flocks of the tiny “feathered locust” still decimate fields across the continent. "Its main characteristic is that it occurs in extremely big...

www.thenewhumanitarian.org

The second link says they have few natural predators, which is normally nature's way of keeping boom-bust cycles from getting out of hand.

Some articles on the problem here:

Red-Billed Quelea - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics

www.sciencedirect.com

Trapping and using them as a protein source one approach, also using falcons to discourage them.

 

[01101001]

There are up to 1.5 billion Red-billed Queleas after the breeding season from what I've found. If they kill millions, millions of others will take their place--it's only perpetuating senseless violence, not to mention the toxicity of the chemicals. Surely, they can do better to find a non-violent alternative.

EDIT: Some of them are listed in the link above; my favourite is planting quelea-resistant crops.

 

[etudiant]

Logical answer is to eat them. Cheap lime traps have worked effectively in Europe for centuries.
The article points out that the birds numbers have soared along with the increase in grain cultivation. so it is a man made problem calling for a man made solution.