Wednesday, February 19, 2020

Improving assessments of an endangered lion population in India

An alternative method for monitoring endangered lions in India could improve estimates of their abundance and help inform conservation policy and management decisions. Keshab Gogoi and colleagues at the Wildlife Institute of India present their findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on February 19, 2020.

Conservation practices have enabled Asiatic lions to recover from a population of only 50 individuals in the Gir Forests of Gujarat, India, to an estimated 500 individuals today. Accurate estimates of their abundance are needed in order for conservation efforts to remain successful. However, existing monitoring methods, particularly a technique known as total counts, can miss some individuals while double-counting others, and they provide limited information on spatial density.

In the new study, Gogoi and colleagues demonstrate an alternative method for monitoring Asiatic lions. They used whisker patterns and permanent body marks to identify individual lions using a computer program and analyzed that data with a mathematical modeling method known as spatially explicit capture recapture in order to estimate lion density. They also assessed prey density and other factors that could influence lion density.

The researchers identified 67 individual lions out of 368 lion sightings within a study site of 725 square kilometers in the Gir Forests, estimating an overall density of 8.53 lions per 100 square kilometers.

They were surprised to find that prey density did not appear to influence variations in lion density within the study site. Instead, lion density was higher in flat valley habitats (as opposed to rugged or elevated areas) and near sites where food had been placed to attract lions for tourists to view them.

The findings suggest that baiting lions for tourism greatly perturbs their natural density patterns, in line with other research demonstrating that baiting disrupts lion behavior and social dynamics. The authors recommend that their alternative monitoring method be used to assess lions across their range (in India and Africa) in order to inform ongoing conservation efforts more accurately.

The authors add: "The only population of Asiatic lions in the world survives in the Saurashtra landscape. Conserving this sub-species with the use of best science and management is a global priority and responsibility. Our research paper addresses this priority by developing a robust approach to their population assessment and monitoring which can be used for all lion populations across the world."

India's endangered lion population increases to 600

More information: Gogoi K, Kumar U, Banerjee K, Jhala YV (2020) Spatially explicit density and its determinants for Asiatic lions in the Gir forests. PLoS ONE 15(2): e0228374. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0228374

New test identifies poisonous mushrooms

by Kim Kaplan, US Department of Agriculture

A simple, portable test that can detect the deadliest of the mushroom poisons in minutes has been developed by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists and their colleagues.

Eating toxic mushrooms causes more than 100 deaths a year, globally, and leaves thousands of people in need of urgent medical assistance. Amanitin is the class of mushroom toxins that cause the most serious issues.

The new test can identify the presence of as little as 10 parts per billion (equivalent to 10 cents out of $10 million) of amanitin in about 10 minutes from a rice grain size sample of a mushroom or in the urine of someone who has eaten a poisonous amanitin-containing mushroom. The test also works with dog urine, as dogs are known to indiscriminately eat mushrooms.

"We developed the test primarily for mushrooms as food products. Serendipitously, it was sensitive enough to also detect the toxin in urine," said ARS microbiologist Candace Bever, who worked on the development. Bever is with the Foodborne Toxin Detection and Prevention Research Unit in Albany, California.

No definitive point-of-care clinical diagnostic test currently exists for amatoxin poisoning. Early detection of amanitin in a patient's urine would help doctors trying to make a diagnosis.

"Our hope is that doctors and veterinarians will be able to quickly and confidently identify amatoxin poisoning rather than having to clinically eliminate other suspected gastrointestinal diseases first," she added. "We also hope that will give patients a better chance at recovery, even though there are no clearly effective, specific treatments right now."

The test also could be a practical and definitive way for mushroom foragers to identify and avoid eating mushrooms with amanitin toxin if a commercial partner can be found to produce and market a test kit. This test is the most sensitive and reliable field method available to chemically identify amanitin-containing mushrooms. Although mushroom experts can identify deadly mushrooms just by looking at their appearance, experts cannot see the toxin chemicals that lurk inside.

Still this test only identifies the presence or absence of this specific class of toxin; it does not detect other compounds such as hallucinogens or toxins that cause other gastrointestinal or neurological symptoms. So, it cannot determine if a mushroom is edible.

Mushroom hunting has gained in popularity in the last several decades. A single mushroom identification group on Facebook, among many, has more than 166,000 members. Foraging for mushrooms is popular throughout most of Europe, Australia, Japan, Korea, parts of the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent, as well as in Canada and the United States. Distinguishing toxic from nontoxic mushroom species is based on first correctly identifying the mushroom and then referencing a mushroom field guide to determine if it is known to contain toxins or not. But mushrooms of the same species can vary in appearance, especially at different life stages and habitats, making them very difficult to identify.

Many poisonous mushrooms closely resemble edible wild mushrooms. For instance, the Springtime Amanita (Amanita velosa) is a highly desirable edible wild mushroom in the Pacific coastal United States. But to the untrained eye, it can appear similar to the Death cap mushroom A. phalloides. The Death Cap accounts for more than 90 percent of fungus-related poisoning deaths in Europe.

"This test can provide more information about a wild mushroom beyond physical appearance and characteristics, and detect something we cannot even see—the presence of amanitins," said Bever. If an affordable product like this was available, foraging could become even more popular and possibly safer.

The new test is an immuno-assay and depends on a very specifically reactive monoclonal antibody—a lab-produced protein that detects and binds only with a specific target. Scientists from the University of California-Davis, Pet Emergency and Specialty Center of Marin and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also contributed to this project.

This research was published in the journal Toxins.

New synthetic route for amanitin, a therapeutically interesting mushroom toxin

More information: Candace S. Bever. Rapid, Sensitive, and Accurate Point-of-Care Detection of Lethal Amatoxins in Urine. Toxins 2020, 12(2), 123; doi.org/10.3390/toxins12020123 (registering DOI)

Progress or pinkwashing: Who benefits from women-focused capital funds?

by Barbara Jayne Orser, The Conversation

An increase in the number of women-focused capital funds promises to help address gender gaps in the provision of financial capital.

Capital funding is the money that lenders and equity holders provide to a business.

A recent study I conducted with Susan Coleman of the University of Hartford in the United States and doctoral candidate Yanhong Li of the University of Ottawa looked at how women entrepreneurs are described within women-focused capital funds. We examined 27 women-focused capital funds in North America.

International studies show that borrower discouragement and informal rejections from potential investors dissuade many women from seeking loans when they start up businesses.

Historically, equity investors have primarily been high-net-worth men. And so a preference to invest in business owners who look and think "just like me" reinforces gender stereotypes. As birds of a feather flock together, women and their businesses can be viewed as too feminine, and therefore less attractive investments. Feminine innovations that benefit women and girls can also be viewed as less attractive.

Our study asked if women-focused capital funds are aimed at truly enhancing gender equity or simply at creating wealth for investors. We were surprised to learn that few funds challenge the institutional constraints that hold back women entrepreneurs. Some actually reinforce gender stereotypes due to how they regard women's supposed entrepreneurial deficiencies.

"Pinkwashing'

For our purposes, we defined "pinkwashing" as capital funds targeted at women solely for marketing purposes. Pinkwashing is most likely the result of creating women-focused funds as an add-on to mainstream finance services, rather than as a central element of the organization's mission to support women.

Several more of our findings should be interesting to would-be investors. Few funds have third-party audits. Online disclosures of fund performance are generally absent. It is often difficult to discern governance and ownership structures of the funds. Lack of reporting standards may reflect the infancy of this capital market.

Stereotypical challenges faced by women also tend to be amplified to legitimize funds, such as the inability to access financial capital and their need for emotional and social support. Women are described as risk-averse, less successful and lacking professional contacts and role models.

In contrast, some funds focus on community building, investment knowledge and circumventing gender biases, offering a positive perspective versus a need to fix women.

Paradoxically, our study's findings provide both optimism and skepticism about the extent to which equality is at the heart of these funds.

We conclude that only a minority of funds seek to counter structural barriers associated with women's access to capital, such as a preference to invest in male-dominated firms and sectors. Most funds are positioned to facilitate individual wealth creation. And few funds prioritize racialized Indigenous people and other underrepresented women versus privileged white women.

Silver lining

At the same time, women-focused capital funds are creating new spaces that enable women investors and small business owners to make choices based on their values, financial knowledge and investment capabilities.

International Women's Day will soon be upon us, and hundreds of investors and women-identified small business owners will gather in Toronto on March 9 for the SheEO Global Summit. Founder Vicki Saunders has a goal—to mobilize the capital, the buying power and the networks of a million volunteers to fund 10,000 women-led ventures.

In the United States, Alicia Robb, founding CEO of Next Wave Impact, is working to reduce the gender imbalance in angel investing and educate women investors. Founding CEO Kathryn Finney of Digitalundivided focuses exclusively on advancing financial capital to Latin-American and Black founders in the U.S. The Indigenous Women Entrepreneurship Fund advances funds for Indigenous businesses in Canada.

Some funds, such as Next Wave Impact, are disrupting the status quo of institutional investment by constructing grassroots engagement, and networks of gender-focused investors and women entrepreneurs.

These change-makers are exemplars of entrepreneurial feminism in the growing market of women-focused capital funds. The investments target women-identified, women-owned and women-led enterprises, and femme and non-binary entrepreneurs.

Ask 'who benefits?'

Investors should keep this in mind before assuming that all women-focused capital funds serve an inclusive economic agenda.

While pinkwashing may be acceptable to some, more transparency is needed to make informed investment decisions. To identify pinkwashing, investors and entrepreneurs are encouraged to examine the governance structure of the funds and ask: "Who appears to benefit from the fund and how?"

Another suggestion is to determine if the fund helps expand the entrepreneurial ecosystem in ways that are likely to benefit women and non-binary femme entrepreneurs, or if the fund serves to perpetuate stereotypes and constraints implicit in the existing ecosystems.

Our study suggests that an increasing number of investment funds described as "women-focused" fall short of this standard in practice.

In light of these findings, due diligence on the part of both investors and entrepreneurs is essential.

Women seeking crowdfunding financing for start-ups are perceived as more trustworthy

Here are 5 practical ways trees can help us survive climate change

by Gregory Moore, The Conversation

As the brutal reality of climate change dawned this summer, you may have asked yourself a hard question: am I well-prepared to live in a warmer world?

There are many ways we can ready ourselves for climate change. I'm an urban forestry scientist, and since the 1980s I've been preparing students to work with trees as the planet warms.

In Australia, trees and urban ecosystems must be at the heart of our climate change response.

Governments have a big role to play—but here are five actions everyday Australians can take as well.

1. Plant trees to cool your home

At the current rate of warming, the number of days above 40℃ in cities including Melbourne and Brisbane, will double by 2050—even if we manage to limit future temperature rises to 2℃.

Trees can help cool your home. Two medium-sized trees (8-10m tall) to the north or northwest of a house can lower the temperature inside by several degrees, saving you hundreds of dollars in power costs each year.

Green roofs and walls can reduce urban temperatures, but are costly to install and maintain. Climbing plants, such as vines on a pergola, can provide great shade, too.

Trees also suck up carbon dioxide and extend the life of the paint on your external walls.

2. Keep your street trees alive

Climate change poses a real threat to many street trees. But it's in everyone's interests to keep trees on your nature strip alive.

Adequate tree canopy cover is the least costly, most sustainable way of cooling our cities. Trees cool the surrounding air when their leaves transpire and the water evaporates. Shade from trees can also triple the lifespan of bitumen, which can save governments millions each year in road resurfacing.

Tree roots also soak up water after storms, which will become more extreme in a warming climate. In fact, estimates suggest trees can hold up to 40% of the rainwater that hits them.

But tree canopy cover is declining in Australia. In Melbourne, for instance, it falls by 1-1.5% annually, mainly due to tree removals on private land.

This shows state laws fail to recognize the value of trees, and we're losing them when we need them most.

Infrastructure works such as level crossing removals have removed trees in places such as the Gandolfo Gardens in Melbourne's inner north, despite community and political opposition. Some of these trees were more than a century old.

So what can you do to help? Ask your local council if they keep a register of important trees of your suburb, and whether those trees are protected by local planning schemes. Depending on the council, you can even nominate a tree for protection and significant status.

But once a development has been approved, it's usually too late to save even special trees.

3. Green our rural areas

Outside cities, we must preserve remnant vegetation and revegetate less productive agricultural land. This will provide shade and moderate increasingly strong winds, caused by climate change.

Planting along creeks can lower water temperatures, which keeps sensitive native fish healthy and reduces riverbank erosion.

Strategically planting windbreaks and preserving roadside vegetation are good ways to improve rural canopy cover. This can also increase farm production, reduce stock losses and prevent erosion.

To help, work with groups like Landcare and Greening Australia to vegetate roadsides and river banks.

4. Make plants part of your bushfire plan

Climate change is bringing earlier fire seasons and more intense, frequent fires. Fires will occur where they hadn't in the past, such as suburban areas. We saw this in the Melbourne suburbs of Bundoora, Mill Park, Plenty and Greensborough in December last year.

It's important to have a fire-smart garden. It might seem counter-intuitive to plant trees around the house to fortify your fire defenses, but some plants actually help reduce the spread of fire—through their less flammable leaves and summer green foliage—and screen your house from embers.

Depending on where you live, suitable trees to plant include crepe myrtle, the hybrid flame tree, Persian ironwood, some fruit trees and even some native eucalypts.

If you're in a bushfire-prone area, landscape your garden by strategically planting trees, making sure their canopies don't overhang the house. Also ensure shrubs do not grow under trees, as they might feed fire up into the canopy.

And in bad fire conditions, rake your garden to put distance between fuel and your home.

5. What if my trees fall during storms?

The fear of a whole tree falling over during storms, or shedding large limbs, is understandable. Human injury or death from trees is extremely rare, but tragedies do occur.

Make sure your trees are healthy, and their root systems are not disturbed when utility services such as plumbing, gas supplies and communication cables are installed.

Coping with a warming world

Urban trees are not just ornaments, but vital infrastructure. They make cities livable and sustainable and they allow citizens to live healthier and longer lives.

For centuries these silent witnesses to urban development have been helping our environment. Urban ecosystems depend on a healthy urban forest for their survival, and so do we.

Local water availability is permanently reduced after planting forests

No need to give up on crowded cities: We can make density so much better

by Thami Croeser and Lucy Gunn, The Conversation

The idea that we should decentralize our population has come up many times in Australia. Recently, the National Farmers' Federation president pushed the notion, calling for a shift to the regions. And the premise is this: city living is unpleasant. Roads are jammed, housing is expensive and it's all so much nicer out in the country. We need to "spread out."

We reject this conclusion. Regional centers certainly must play a role in accommodating our population growth, but for now it'll be a modest role.

The more immediate need is to focus on improving conditions in our major cities. Our smaller towns matter, but we can't neglect the urgent need to get better at doing the bigger ones right.

Our cities are growing very rapidly. The fastest growth is in Melbourne, which added 119,400 residents in 2017-18. That's nearly as many extra people as the entire population of Darwin in a single year. This rapid growth doesn't need to mean more traffic, ugliness or stratospheric housing prices and rents—if we confront a difficult truth.

A dirty word in Australia

The truth is we're just really ordinary at urban density. It's so poorly executed in Australian cities that it has become a dirty word in local politics.

Urban density targets remain low in planning policies for many states. It's often set at around 15 dwellings per hectare. In practice, even lower density is delivered.

Australians tend to think of density as living in high-rise tiny apartments. Drop the "d-word" at your local pub and see how the term "shoebox" or "vertical slum" quickly follows.

The irony is that the very thing that makes a getaway to central Paris or Barcelona so attractive is what many Australian city residents revile at home. The places we visit and admire are really quite dense.

Our estimates based on UN figures suggest Paris averages around 213 people per hectare and Barcelona 156. (By contrast, Melbourne averages 38 people per hectare and Sydney around 50.)

It's higher-density living that makes their streets and public spaces buzz. But, importantly, this density is achieved through a combination of well-designed mid-rise apartments (roughly six stories) close to shops, services and public transport. This gives residents the best of both worlds: cities that are livable and likable.

A failure of planning

Past failed experiments in density have made it difficult to replicate overseas examples locally. The great Australian dream of owning a quarter-acre block and the stigma around density persist with reason. In Melbourne, for example, rapid high-rise development in the last decade has delivered large numbers of very small apartments, in some cases of poor quality and lacking natural light and ventilation.

Very modest investment in public transport makes things worse, as new residents try to cram onto services that haven't kept pace with growth. Car parking, however, is usually mandated. These planning rules mean the price of new apartments includes the expense of multiple floors of parking, and streetscapes are peppered with vehicle crossover ramps.

Without adequate public transport, roads fill with cars, stoking resident opposition to further infill development. The roads and parking these cars need occupy valuable space, which could be better used for trees and urban greening. Green space is often overlooked in the haste to accommodate rapid population growth, yet it's essential for community health and well-being and for reducing urban heat island effects.

Handling population growth doesn't require us to move to Tamworth or Toowoomba, but it will require some really important changes in our urban development priorities. There has to be a much stronger focus on quality and aesthetics to win back public support for infill development. It's also going to take commitment to lift density targets in key planning policies.

Life on a Dutch woonerf.

Plan Melbourne's 2017 refresh, for instance, has moved to a goal of "over 20 dwellings per hectare." It follows the recommendations of research in allowing higher densities in high-activity areas such as activity or town centers. However, it will take time to implement this change in existing and new areas across the city.

Density must be complemented by suitable streetscapes and infrastructure. This will require a significant rethink of the role of the car in urban areas, greater investment in public transport, and a reallocation of large areas of streetscape space to greenery and pedestrians.

That's a big ask, but it's worth it, because density really doesn't have to mean "dogbox."

Dutch show change is possible

Take a (digital) walk around a woonerf neighborhood in the Netherlands, and you'll notice on-street parking is scant, the speed limit is around 15km/h and plentiful road space is allocated to tree planting and garden beds. Kids play in the street under the watchful eye of long-term locals. You don't notice the dense apartments around you because there are trees in the way and there's a lot to see at ground level.

Remarkably, it was only in the 1970s that the Dutch started to move away from car-oriented planning to deliver this kind of urban design, which puts people and place first. With courageous policy change, we could have this in Australia too.Superblocks currently transforming Barcelona might work in Australian cities, tooProvided by The Conversation

Emergency Recovery Plan could halt catastrophic collapse in world's freshwater biodiversity

by WWF

With biodiversity vanishing from rivers, lakes and wetlands at alarming speed, a new scientific paper outlines an Emergency Recovery Plan to reverse the rapid decline in the world's freshwater species and habitats—and safeguard our life support systems.

Published today in BioScience, the Emergency Recovery Plan calls for the world to take urgent steps to tackle the threats that have led to an 83% collapse in freshwater species populations and the loss of 30% of freshwater ecosystems since 1970—ecosystems that provide us with water, food, livelihoods, and protection from floods, droughts and storms.

Developed by a global team of scientists from WWF, International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Conservation International, Cardiff University and other eminent organizations and academic institutions, this is the first comprehensive plan to protect and restore freshwater habitats, which host more species per square kilometer than land or oceans—and are losing this extraordinary biodiversity two or three times faster.

The six-point plan prioritizes solutions that are rooted in cutting edge science and have already proven successful in certain locations: letting rivers flow more naturally, reducing pollution, protecting critical wetland habitats, ending overfishing and unsustainable sand mining in rivers and lakes, controlling invasive species, and safeguarding and restoring river connectivity through better planning of dams and other infrastructure.

Critically, with governments meeting in November to agree on a new global deal to conserve and restore biodiversity at a landmark conference of the Convention on Biological Diversity, the authors recommend some new targets, including on restoring water flows, controlling illegal and unregulated sand mining in rivers, and improving management of freshwater fisheries that feed hundreds of millions of people.

"Nowhere is the biodiversity crisis more acute than in the world's rivers, lakes and wetlands—with over a quarter of freshwater species now heading for extinction. The Emergency Recovery Plan can halt this decades-long decline and restore life to our dying freshwater ecosystems, which underpin all of our societies and economies," said Dave Tickner, WWF-UK Chief Freshwater Advisor and lead author on the paper.

Covering approximately 1% of the Earth's surface, rivers, lakes and freshwater wetlands are home to 10% of all species and more described fish species than in all the world's oceans. But they are rapidly disappearing with populations of freshwater megafauna—such as river dolphins, sturgeon, beavers, crocodiles and giant turtles—crashing by 88% in the past half century.

"The causes of the global collapse in freshwater biodiversity are no secret, yet the world has consistently failed to act, turning a blind eye to the worsening crisis even though healthy freshwater ecosystems are central to our survival. The Emergency Recovery Plan provides an ambitious roadmap to safeguarding freshwater biodiversity—and all the benefits it provides to people across the world," said co-author, Professor Steven Cooke of Carleton University in Canada.

The Emergency Recovery Plan highlights a variety of measures that together will transform the management and health of rivers, lakes and wetlands, such as treating more than 20% of sewage before it is flushed into nature, avoiding dams on the world's remaining free flowing rivers, and expanding and strengthening protected areas in partnership with local communities.

"All the solutions in the Emergency Recovery Plan have been tried and tested somewhere in the world: they are realistic, pragmatic and they work. We are calling on governments, investors, companies and communities to prioritize freshwater biodiversity—often neglected by the conservation and water management worlds. Now is the time to implement these solutions, before it is too late," said James Dalton, Director of IUCN's Global Water Programme.

"We have the last opportunity to create a world with rivers and lakes that once again teem with wildlife, and with wetlands that are healthy enough to sustain our communities and cities, but only if we stop treating them like sewers and wastelands," said Tickner. "This decade will be critical for freshwater biodiversity: countries must seize the chance to keep our life support systems running by ensuring freshwater conservation and restoration are central to a New Deal for Nature and People."

An 88 percent decline in large freshwater animals

More information: David Tickner et al. Bending the Curve of Global Freshwater Biodiversity Loss: An Emergency Recovery Plan, BioScience (2020). DOI: 10.1093/biosci/biaa002

Uganda army fights voracious desert locusts

by Michael O'hagan

Locusts swarms are threatening food supplies in East Africa, where 12 million are already going hungry

Under a warm morning sun scores of weary soldiers stare as millions of yellow locusts rise into the northern Ugandan sky, despite hours spent spraying vegetation with chemicals in an attempt to kill them.

From the tops of shea trees, fields of pea plants and tall grass savanna, the insects rise in a hypnotic murmuration, disappearing quickly to wreak devastation elsewhere.

The soldiers and agricultural officers will now have to hunt the elusive fast-moving swarms—a sign of the challenge facing nine east African countries now battling huge swarms of hungry desert locusts.

They arrived in conflict-torn South Sudan this week, with concerns already high of a humanitarian crisis in a region where 12 million are going hungry, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

"One swarm of 40 to 80 million can consume food" for over 35,000 people in a day, Priya Gujadhur, a senior FAO official in Uganda, told AFP.

In Atira—a remote village of grass-thatched huts in northern Uganda—some 160 soldiers wearing protective plastic overalls, masks and goggles sprayed trees and plants with pesticide from before dawn in a bid to kill the resting insects.

But even after hours of work they were mostly able to reach only lower parts of the vegetation.

Large swarms of locusts can in a single day consume enough vegetation to feed 35,000 people

Major General Kavuma sits in the shade of a Neem Tree alongside civilian officials as locusts sprayed with pesticide earlier that morning fall around them, convulsing as they die.

An intense chemical smell hangs in the air.

'They surrounded me'

Zakaria Sagal, a 73-year-old subsistence farmer was weeding his field in Lopei village some 120 kilometres (75 miles) away, preparing to plant maize and sorghum, when without warning a swarm of locusts descended around him.

"From this side and this side and this side, they surrounded me," Sagal said, waving his arms in every direction.

"We have not yet planted our crops but if they return at harvest time they will destroy everything. We are not at all prepared."

East Africa's regional expert group, the Climate Prediction and Applications Centre (ICPAC), warned Tuesday that eggs laid across the migratory path will hatch in the next two months, and will continue breeding as the rainy season arrives in the region.

This will coincide with the main cropping season and could cause "significant crop losses... and could potentially worsen the food security situation", ICPAC said in a statement.

Soldiers have been deployed in Uganda to spray trees and savannas in a bid to beat back the infestation

'Panic mode'

Since 2018 a long period of dry weather followed by a series of cyclones that dumped water on the region created "excessively ideal conditions" for locusts to breed, says Gujadhur.

Nevertheless, governments in East Africa have been caught off guard and are currently in "panic mode" Gujadhur said.

The locusts arrived in South Sudan this week after hitting Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti, Eritrea, Tanzania, Sudan and Uganda.

Desert locusts take over on a dizzying scale.

One swarm in Kenya reached around 2,400 square kilometres (about 930 square miles)—an area almost the size of Moscow—meaning it could contain up to 200 billion locusts.

"A swarm that size can consume food for 85 million people per day," said Gujadhur.

Ugandan authorities are aware that subsequent waves of locusts may pose problems in the weeks to come, but in the meantime they are attempting to control the current generation.

Locust eggs laid across the migratory path will hatch in the next two months, allowing the insects to continue to wreak havoc

Gujadhur is quick to praise the "quite strong and very quick" response from the Ugandan government but is concerned that while the army can provide valuable personnel, a military-led response may not be as effective as is necessary.

"It needs to be the scientists and (agriculture officials) who take the lead about where the control operations need to be and how and when and what time," she said.

'They eat anything green'

The soldiers have been working non-stop for two days, criss-crossing the plains on the few navigable roads, trying to keep up with the unpredictable swarms.

Major General Kavuma recognises that the biggest threat is from the eggs which are yet to hatch but is confident the army will be able to control this enemy.

"We have the chemicals to spray them, all we need is to map the places they have been landing and sleeping," he said.

"In two weeks time we will come back and by that time they will have hatched and that will be the time to destroy them by spraying."

Locusts arrived in South Sudan this week after hitting Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti, Eritrea, Tanzania, Sudan and Uganda

Back in Lopei village, Elizabeth Namoe, 40, a shopkeeper in nearby Moroto had been visiting family when the swarm arrived.

"When the locusts settle they eat anything green, the animals will die because they have nothing to feed on, then even the people (will suffer)," she said.

"The children will be affected by hunger and famine since all life comes from all that is green. I fear so much."

Locust swarms arrive in South Sudan, threatening more misery

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