Beijing academic rejects local news report that 100,000 ducks would be sent to fight plague

China will not send ducks to tackle locusts in Pakistan, says expert

China will not be sending ducks to Pakistan to chomp through a plague of locusts after all, an expert from Beijing’s troubleshooting team has said.

A report in the Ningbo Evening News had said 100,000 ducks would be sent from Zhejiang province to Pakistan to deal with its worst locust invasion in two decades, generating 520m views on China’s Weibo social media platform on Thursday and thousands of comments.

China deployed ducks, whose natural diet includes insects, to fight a similar infestation in the north-western Xinjiang region two decades ago, reportedly with considerable effectiveness.

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Despite the popular support for the idea in a country where cute duck memes have become hugely popular, Zhang Long, a professor from China Agricultural University told reporters in Pakistan the ducks would not be suited to the conditions there.

“Ducks rely on water, but in Pakistan’s desert areas, the temperature is very high,” Zhang said. Zhang, part of a delegation of Chinese experts sent to help the south Asian country combat the locusts, advised the use of chemical or biological pesticides instead.

The locusts have already caused extensive damage in east Africa and India. Locust swarms can fly up to 150km (90 miles) a day with the wind, and eat as much in one day as about 35,000 people.

The Ningbo Evening News had quoted Lu Lizhi, a researcher from the Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Agricultural Technology, as saying the use of ducks was much less expensive and environmentally damaging than pesticides. “Ducks like to stay in a group, so they’re easier to manage than chickens,” he said. A duck is also capable of eating more than 200 locusts per day, compared to just 70 for a chicken, Lu said.

• This article was amended on 27 February 2020 after Zhang Long rejected the Ningbo Evening News report that China was going to dispatch ducks to Pakistan