Locust Management

There's a slate of international institutions that coordinates locust management and response. The primary effort is conducted by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, which runs the Desert Locust Watch to track locust migration patterns and oversee regional response efforts. In individual nations, a lack of cash, competing priorities and domestic challenges make it hard to mount a long-range pest management strategy. Because locust numbers ebb and flow, it's been difficult for countries - such as Kenya, which hasn't seen an infestation in 70 years - to build up intermediate and long-term infrastructure to address outbreaks proactively. That's why so many governments are now scrambling to come up with solutions. "It's hard to maintain funding and political will and knowledge and capacity building when you have these unpredictable boom and bust cycles that could play out over years or decades," a pest expert, Overson, says. "If you wait until it's reactive and forget about it until it happens again, we're going to be in this situation forever."