China to dispatch 100,000-strong 'duck army' to Pakistan to devour locust swarm
China is planning to dispatch a 100,000-strong army of ducks to help Pakistan combat a massive locust infestation, a local newspaper reported on Thursday. The legion of lotus-eating waterfowl will be sent from the eastern province of Zhejiang following the earlier arrival of a team of Chinese experts in Pakistan to advise on how to tackle the infestation, said to be the worst in 20 years, the Ningbo Evening News said. 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. Their use is both much less expensive and environmentally-damaging than pesticides, the paper quoted a Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Agricultural Technology researcher, Lu Lizhi, as saying. Ducks are also more suited to the task than other poultry, such as chickens, Lu said. “Ducks like to stay in a group, so they’re easier to manage than chickens,” he s...