The Emergency Consortium of Lanzarote has released a video showing a swarm of locusts on the road from Caleta de Famara to the San Juan beach.
It’s the first sight of a swarm of the large grasshoppers on the island, although many hundreds of isolated examples have been reported elsewhere on the island, startling a few residents and entertaining many cats. Locusts are large insects, around 7 to 9 cms in length, but are entirely harmless to humans.
The Cabildo will monitor the situation and establish whether the locusts that have arrived here are adults in the later stages of life, or of breeding age. In the latter case, measures may need to be taken to eradicate the locusts, which are harmless to humans but could damage crops.
Francisco Fabelo, the Cabildo’s Environment Councillor, said that this was “unlikely” pointed out that “In 2004 we experienced a similar situation, and there was also a similar episode in the 1980s, but on both occasions, crops were not threatened.”
The change in wind direction means that, for the time being, the arrival of more locusts is unlikely.
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