AERIAL surveillance has identified 120 bands of locusts in north-west Victoria, with several of them stretching up to one kilometre, the Department of Primary Industries has said.
Subscribe now for unlimited access to all our agricultural news
across the nation
or signup to continue reading
The locust bands were seen during surveillance flights on Friday, mostly on privately owned land. The longest bands spotted were on private land near Robinvale.
Locust activity increases during warmer weather and temperatures surged passed 30 degrees across the Mallee on Friday, with Mildura recording a daytime maximum of 31.6 degrees.
Locusts start forming bands after they are about two weeks old. The bands can be as dense as 15,000 per square metre and can cause severe damage to crops and pasture.
Researchers have learned that the movement of bands is driven by the need to find food and by cannibalism, where young locusts eat other locusts.
Victoria's state controller for locusts, Russell McMurray, said the use of helicopters instead of planes had enabled locust activity to be surveyed more effectively than in the past.
Mr McMurray said the fine weather expected today would allow large parts of the Mallee and the Wimmera to be surveyed.
Since the start of September there have been 3704 reports of locust activity made to the Department of Primary Industries - 2755 have come from the Mallee, with 463 reports from the Wimmera and 372 from the north-central area. More than 95 per cent have been confirmed as Australian plague locusts.
The Victorian government has said that if locusts are left untreated, the state's expected locust plague could cost agriculture $2 billion.
