Swarm Chasers | Unreported World

alongside the chronovirus kenyans are enduring another infestation it leaves families destitute and starving [Music] vast swarms of desert locusts are devouring every crop and scrap of vegetation they land on and their numbers are growing at a frightening rate [Music] i have my first encounter with the locust in southern kenya look wow [Music] wow all of this black are the tiny hoppers hopkins are essentially baby locusts they've been incubating under the ground in eggs laid two weeks ago by a passing locus worm there's just so many of them the entire road is covered in them newly hatched locusts are called hoppers they can't yet fly but feed voraciously look they're just coming out of these tunnels during her three months life a female locust can lay 250 eggs within weeks the hoppers will be able to fly creating a new swarm you see these white things they're the locust eggs that these teeny tiny baby locusts have just hatched from just give them a couple of weeks and they're going to turn into grown mature locals that have been devastating this entire country that have been affecting the livelihoods of millions of people in the region it looks like they're multiplying by the minute what is your biggest worry about your near future with this situation we [Music] nearby farmers are battling the vast infestation with pesticides supplied by the ministry of agriculture but they have to source it abroad and supplies are running out other farmers are looking for help elsewhere [Applause] [Music] [Applause] in a special service they're asking god for help but their pastor reminds them locates where one of the ten plagues got unleashed in egypt for defying his [Music] will the lord said to moses raise your hand over the land of egypt don't bring the locusts they will come and eat everything that grows everything that has survived the hay why do you think god sent the swarms i think he said in something because of the same and people ignoring him agriculture provides a livelihood for more than 80 percent of the population in kenya and nearly 1.3 million live on the edge of hunger close to the congregation i visit the farm of anthony and his family he's 24 years old and an agricultural student these hoppers are everywhere wow all the stems and these are completely black [Music] they grow millet sorghum and cotton the adult locus hardly spelled any of the crops and before moving on they left millions of eggs behind yeah you can see there what do you see it's happening now this was the unhealthy plant but now you can see it is well destructed now as we are going to spray even the time we are spraying the things were destructed because as we are spraying some some the young ones are just coming out from the ground the financial cost of this destruction is hitting already anthony has had to drop out of college he and his parents show me their grain stores their crops are just about ready for harvest when the locusts attacked this is all your harvest for this year how much do you normally have around the three greeneries but now you have only one and this one isn't even full [Music] government aircraft did spray the swarms here with pesticide but only after a week do you think the government could have done more to help you when it comes in terms of government you do things slowly you can wait in government until you die the planting season is just about to start but the family can't risk sowing seeds with their farms still infested we head north to turkana county it borders ethiopia where many swarms are entering kenya from in this semi-arid area unusual rainfall has brought the greenery locusts need to feed on as well as the moist soil to lay eggs there are reports that swarms are gathering of a size nuts in here for 70 years ah look at that [Music] look at my feet they are tree locusts not desert locusts but they're a sign their larger and more destructive cousins are close this is literally happening in the middle of town this is not even a rural area it's an urban area early next morning i'm riding with peter lochaquan and alfons oren from the ministry of agriculture job is to hunt down locust worms and destroy them peter what do we know about this particular swarm so far so the place that you're going is uh bothering some part of philoppia and sudan might have moved from sudan to kenya it's important to get together determine the the size of the swamp possibly to take the coordinates that will help us to get the aircraft for the spray flying somewhere above us is one of the six kenyan military aircrafts equipped for spraying the locust with pesticide how important is it to get there now to get there fast as far as when them in the morning is much easier when they are still not so active so that that means like it's in a place where it's much controllable so these locusts get their energy from the sun because they're cold blooded and it's important for us to get there before the sun is properly out in the sky and before it's hot we're literally sworn chasing when on the move swarms can travel over a hundred miles in a day locals are calling in sightings of where swarms settled overnight we're looking for the exact location and he's getting lots of questions we're close to where this form was sighted we are looking at the tree cover to see whether it's covered with the locust [Music] we just saw the pesticide spraying plane um just there we know that the locusts are somewhere here but where is the mystery the spraying aircraft is running low on fuel but in the nick of time peter spots a flash of yellow in the bushes we found them ahead and see whether we can see another another big swamp they soon realized it's one of the biggest they've personally [Music] encountered the team sends gps coordinates to the aircraft they show their swarm stretches for seven square kilometers at least 20 million low castes this one is the biggest one it's one of the biggest one of thousands we phoned the locast so it requires immediate intervention spraying at that now okay come come come guys the pesticide used to kill other locusts needs to be extremely powerful so the army plane circles low a signal to anyone below to clear the area we're getting out of the area because they're about to spray [Music] an hour later their swarm is normal but there are many other swarms in the area to be hunted down we get news from other swarm hunters 200 miles south that there are swarms in an area that's vital to kenya's economy we've approached the highlands and it's visibly so much greener it's so lush here this is where the cash crops are growing like coffee tea and agriculture here is big business many large farms here export internationally damage to their businesses will take months to become a parent i'm heading to the local government's office right now hoping that they can tell us where the locusts are inna nanuki i meet john hutu another swarm hunter working for the ministry of agriculture a farmer is giving him the location of a new swarm this contact now is telling me that where they are now they are visible and these are the adult locust mating and laying eggs right now we are expecting that they are doing delay the front now not unless we take off very early in the morning it was like now going and coming back it will be too late [Music] the next morning i head out with john this is an area full of small farms as well as protected wildlife like white rhino and zebras this means it's often too dangerous to use planes spraying powerful pesticides [Music] zachary is the farmer that spotted the locust and tipped off jack isn't it at first you can't see them the deeper we go into the field the but john the swarm hunter decides this is a place where they can't risk aerial spraying the small scale farmers are closely saturn these pesticides one if they are in this like that they can be maybe hazardous to the community and i noticed the river is right there if the aerial sprain came they could put they could poison the water john marks the location where the locusts have laid eggs so that later they can come back and spray their newborn hoppers but for now the farmers are left on their own to battle their swarm threatening their crops we are going to one of the farms who are just just across from where the locust invasion is and they are trying to find ways to scare them off from entering their farms they have arrived to your farm near to where the swarm is resting across the river janna and her family have a one acre farm my biggest worry when they eat this see my birth goku huh even a small swarm can eat the same amount of food in a day as 35 000 people this is my job more lucas arrive so their life fires jen hopes the smoke will repel them since those locusts arrived there yesterday the farmers have been doing everything they can to try and repel them from their farms because they know as soon as one of them a couple of them come into their farms their rest will follow first they will devour everything then they will lay eggs and their numbers will multiply [Music] suddenly locusts start to fill the sky they're all above the farm now they fly over us but don't land jenny's safe but the locusts are now in her neighbor's farms it's only a matter of time before these farmers face much larger swarms then they'll need much more than small bonfires to fend them off how confident are you that the government that the authorities will help you tackle this before it's too late are they going to help me the government is going to help me i don't know why don't you in the north larger swarms are gathering i head back to torcana to join swarm hunters peter and our force israel and alfonso have been sending me updates of the reports they've been receiving on the locust hotline apparently about three hours north of here near the south sudan border there's been sightings of big swarms last night it seems like we're in the right area a few people we've asked along the way they they said that they definitely saw pigs weren't flying over in this general direction um mama nobody [Music] despite continuing to receive calls from the locals reporting sightings of locust swarms the guys from the ministry of agriculture are staying in they told us that's because they still haven't received the pesticides from the central government with no pesticide both the spraying aircraft and the swarm hunters are grounded we're now in a county that in effect has been abandoned to the locusts but we keep searching the chief erot and his father ekeru held goats and live off their milk and meat but passing locust forms have devastated the grazing and just as we've seen in the south here too new swarms are emerging from the locust eggs laid by the earliest worms foreign [Music] we continue our search for the locus warps we know that they are heading north towards the border of south sudan so at least we're going in the right sort of general direction just before sunset we fight them holy look at that it's the biggest one we've seen yet they're devouring everything on their path and they're growing and they're multiplying by the second and the local authorities can't do anything about it [Music] [Music] for that yellow behind me they're not yellow leaves all of that are locusts feeding on those trees [Music] all of these locusts here and nothing is being done about them we wanted to ask the kenyan government about what we'd seen but they told us no one was available however they insist they're winning the war against locusts but since our filming the coronavirus has slowed efforts to fight the infestation and made it even harder to import pesticides a second wave of locus in swarms up to 20 times larger is now forming [Music] thanks for watching click the logo to subscribe for more award-winning documentaries from the unreported world team we upload videos every sunday keeping you up to date with content from all over the 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Rating: 4.9019942 out of 5

Keywords: Unreported world, unreported world documentary, Kenya, Kenyalocusts, locustswarm, locusts, EastAfrica, AfricaLocusts, Documentary

Id: DBl6eQDNhxE

Length: 23min 55sec (1435 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 24 2020