China Is Not Sending Ducks to Eat Pakistan’s Locusts

No, China is not sending an army of ducks to defeat Pakistan’s locusts.

A report by the Ningbo Evening News—later picked up and distributed by the Associated Press—suggested 100,000 waterfowl would be sent from Zhejiang province to Pakistan to help combat the locust swarms.

After all, China deployed ducks (whose natural diet includes insects) to fight a similar infestation in the Xinjiang region 20 years ago, with purported effectiveness, according to The Guardian.

So who’s to say it wouldn’t work again?

China Agricultural University professor Zhang Long, that’s who.

“Ducks rely on water, but in Pakistan’s desert areas, the temperature is very high,” Zhang, one of a delegation of experts, said.

Instead, he advised the use of chemical or biological pesticides.

The original Ningbo Evening News report quoted Lu Lizhi, a researcher from the Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Agricultural Technology, who claimed ducks are cheaper and less environmentally damaging than pesticides.

They’re also more effective than chickens, apparently.

“Ducks like to stay in a group, so they’re easier to manage than chickens,” Lu said, adding that the freshwater birds can eat more than 200 locusts per day, compared to a measly 70 for poultry.

Billions of desert locusts—appearing in numbers not seen for decades—have already caused extensive damage in Africa and India; Pakistan declared a national emergency earlier this month.

Swarms of the short-horned grasshoppers can fly up to 90 miles a day with the wind and devour enough food for 35,000 people daily.

The AP has updated its story, amended to note that “questions were raised” about the original Chinese report. But respected outlets like Time, Bloomberg, and the BBC (as of press time) are still indicating that a massive duck army is on its way to South Asia.

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