In ancient times, except in the Taiping and prosperous period, people could eat enough, and almost all other periods were worried about food, if they were unfortunate enough to encounter war or natural disasters, then the lives of civilians would be even more miserable.
Therefore, in ancient times, people were very afraid of natural disasters except for wars. And the one that makes people feel most desperate is the locust plague. Every time the oppressive army of locusts flew to a place, they would eat all the crops in the area. People are at a low level of productivity, and there is nothing they can do in the face of the locust army, but to watch them waste their crops.
Locust plagues are also considered to be one of the three major disasters. However, even in modern times, many countries and regions still face the threat of locust plagues from time to time.
In June 2019, billions of locust larvae emerged in the Somali region of East Africa due to the effects of continuous dry weather, and this swarm of locusts continued to graze on crops along the way, leaving no grass everywhere they went. By 2020, the locusts numbered as many as 100 billion, forming a phalanx of tens of kilometers long and wide, flying from East Africa to the Red Sea and heading straight for Asia, causing unpredictable losses to crops in Countries such as Iran, India and Pakistan along the way.
According to local media reports, this is the worst locust plague in the Indian and Pakistani regions in the past 27 years. However, what makes people more worried is that this group of locusts has not stopped their pace, they are still active in Central Asia, so this group of locusts is very likely to enter China's Xinjiang region from the Ili River Valley and the Junggar Basin, which has also caused many netizens to worry.
However, people living in the Xinjiang region only smiled slightly, and even said bluntly, just let the horses come! And all this confidence stems from a group of more than 200,000 "locust fighters" who settled in China's Xinjiang region in August this year, the pink starling.
Speaking of this, some small partners may have questioned, can these billions of locusts rely only on 200,000 starlings to completely wipe them out?
The answer is yes, even if this locust is not enough for the pink starling to plug the teeth of it! You should know that the pink starling is a well-known master of locust catching. Usually an adult starling is about 20 cm long, weighs about 65 grams, and its feathers on the head and tail are bright black, but the back and abdomen are pink. Such beautiful birds make it really hard for people to think that they are a full-fledged locust killer. Their diet is so staggering that in general, a starling hunts nearly 200 locusts a day, which is definitely the bearer of the locust hunting world! It is no wonder that some netizens living in Xinjiang will say that this locust is probably not enough for starlings to eat!
So why did the Xinjiang region start attracting pink starlings to settle down many years ago?
In fact, all this stems from the fact that the Xinjiang region has been suffering from locusts for many years. Because the climate in Xinjiang is relatively arid and the vegetation is very sparse, the local ecological environment is also relatively weak. This has also led to the fact that Xinjiang has been a region prone to locust plagues since ancient times. In 2000, there was a large locust plague in Xinjiang, and the area of crops affected was as high as 2.7 million mu, and it was no exaggeration to say at that time that dozens of locusts could be trampled to death with one foot.
In order to protect the fragile ecological environment in Xinjiang, people have preferred safer biological control methods to eliminate locusts. At that time, China drew a large number of ducks from the duck farms in the eastern provinces to go to Xinjiang to kill locusts, and achieved great results at that time. However, due to the higher cost of "duck herding to control locusts" and the scope of governance is also small. There is an urgent need for a more convenient and efficient approach to biomanagement.
The appearance of the pink starling completely solves people's needs. After people learned about the habits of pink starlings, they began to build a large number of nests suitable for starlings to inhabit, and provided them with special food and drinking water areas. After the state solved the problem of "housing and life" of starlings, more and more starlings began to nest in The Xinjiang region. And in 2008, the 60,000 starlings that inhabited the Xinjiang region single-handedly eliminated hundreds of millions of locusts and protected nearly 120,000 acres of crops, so the starlings were also known as the "steppe ironclad army" by the locals.
After years of "talent introduction program", there are now more than 200,000 starlings inhabiting the Xinjiang region. I believe that under their protection, Xinjiang will no longer suffer from the threat of locust plague!